


Halfway Between Rage and Serenity

by shakespeare_pen_princess



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeare_pen_princess/pseuds/shakespeare_pen_princess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his efforts to locate another telepath for his Brotherhood, Magneto comes across a young woman named Elaina Cohen, an unseasoned mutant with the power to control emotions and he believes she is exactly what he's looking for. Throughout her training, the two of them realize they have more in common than they could have ever suspected. Rating for language. Eventual Magneto/OC</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Verdict

**Author's Note:**

> This is a new story of mine with two main original characters. Elaina is mine and Horrorshow belongs to a friend and I’m using him with his permission. All the other characters are property of Marvel. Also note, I am elaborating on Magneto’s backstory throughout with information different than the X-Men movie universe. It comes from a comic book called X-Men: Magneto Testament. It’s an elaborate depiction of his time in Nazi Germany. If you haven’t read it, it is amazing and I highly recommend it. Other than that, he is Michael Fassbender Magneto for all intents and purposes.

Prologue: The Verdict

Just outside of a New York courtroom, a man stood just to the side of the entrance. His pale blue eyes were scanning each and every person as the passed him impatiently on their way inside. No one paid the spectator more than a passing glance, which they gained very little information from due to the fedora and its brim, which was perfectly angled downward to cover the top half of the man’s face. If they could see the expression that the hat was hiding, the passer-bys would have seen that the man was just as uninterested in them. In fact, if it was possible to be more disenchanted he was. Once his eyes passed over them sure they were not the person he was waiting for, he moved on. The man continued this routine for several minutes, searching to no avail until he was until he too grew just as anxious as those passing him. The loud chatter of those entering the courthouse was momentarily interrupted by the metallic sound of one of the hinges attaching the door coming loose. Only a couple that happened to be walking inside at the moment noticed. They muttered a flippant comment about how they paid enough in taxes that surely the government could afford to keep the building in better repair and moved on. No one, however, noticed the ever-so-slight twitch of the man in the fedora’s fingers, which seemed to have occurred at the exact moment of the incident… or how the missing screw stopped almost instantly at his feet.

When the man stranding outside the courthouse looked up from a half-amused glance at the screw next to his left foot, the object of his searching was in front of him. He was another man, at least a head taller that the one who had been waiting for him. His pace as he approached was slow and calculated, not at all in a hurry in spite of the fact his companion had been waiting for him at least fifteen minutes. His movement and stature suggested very little phased the man approaching the courthouse door and the situation at hand was not one of those instances. While he ascended the final few steps to the door, he shot a glance at the figure waiting. He watched as he impatiently as he stood up even more strait, positioned the fedora on his head so that it no longer hid so much of his face, and took several steps in his direction in order to close the distance between them faster until, at last, the two of the were standing face to face.

“Horrorshow,” the waiting man greeted curtly. 

“Magnus,” was the approaching man’s response in a tone similar to the one that had been taken with him.

“You’re late.”

“Hey, if you want punctual, call Grand Central Station. If you want shit done, call me.”

Magneto quietly scoffed at the remark. He expected nothing less from Horrorshow. From anyone else, the statement would have been self-important and insolent (two things he did not tolerate) but for the man standing in front of him, it was true. Although he wasn’t a man Magneto particularly enjoyed being around, Horrowshow was nothing if not efficient. The two of them had been doing business for some time and he always delivered what he promised. His methods were, at times, a bit medieval and unorthodox (Magneto had learned years ago not to inquire about them) his results could not be argued with. The two men exchanged a look while still more people passed by them to enter the building. The sound of the door opening and closing, now even louder with the one of its hinges unattached, reminded the man in the fedora of the task at hand.

“Shall we go inside?” Magneto asked.

Horrorshow didn’t say a word in response to his companion. Instead, he shifted over to the side and moved passed Magneto. He began walking toward the door, never once looking back to see if he was following behind. As he at last moved into the courthouse, he couldn’t help but laugh darkly to himself. No sooner had he made it to the first hallway, he had already caught a glimpse of the same image at least four times. It was always the same: the symbol of Lady Justice, blindfolded with a perfectly balanced scale in one hand and a sword in the other. According to the ancient image, justice was supposed to be blind, equal, and sharp in its execution. ‘What a load of bullshit,’ Horrowshow mused to himself at the idea. If that were true, the world would be different that it actually was. If the fierce-looking lady truly had any power, men like him and Magneto would not exist because there would be no need for them. No. She was just an image for people to hide behind now. The ideals she stood for were just words now, hollow and without meaning. He had the distinct feeling as he finally reached his destination (one of the man courtrooms down a long, narrow hallway) that the events of this day was only going to be more of the same and serve as fuel for his seething opinions against humanity’s twisted view of what they called justice.

One right behind the other, the two men entered the courtroom discreetly under the cover of the chatter the other spectators were filling the room with. The two of them sat down quietly in the last row with only minutes to spare before the proceedings were to begin. Magneto took the limited time he knew he had to look at his target, the reason he enlisted Horrorshow’s help and the only things that could get him willingly into a courtroom again after spending ten years in hundreds of feet below the Pentagon. The view of the defendant’s chair was limited from where he was seated, but it also decreased the chances of him being noticed. The distance would have no bearing on his companion’s ability to use his gift (the real reason they were there) but the man still couldn’t help but look in the direction of his interest all the same. As he focused in, he recalled everything he had learned about the figure sitting across the room in a lonely chair, waiting more impatiently than anyone else to hear the court’s verdict. Still, it did little to prepare him for what he saw.

Magneto knew that the defendant’s name was Elaina Cohen. He knew that she was a woman in her early thirties, only a few years younger than him. He also knew that, before her current trouble, she had been a head nurse at a local hospital. Finally, he knew that the man seated directly behind her dressed in an expensive black suit with his wheat-colored hair slicked back of his slightly rounded face was Daniel Cohen, her husband. For now, he was just Mayor of a small town upstate, but many people (Daniel himself not least among them) had high hopes for his budding political career. Even in the midst of his extensive probing into both of the Cohen’s life, Magneto found very little outside of the situation at hand that interested him. That was, until moments ago when he got his first glance at the woman he had taken such an interest in.

From an early age, Magneto considered himself to be a very observant person. It was a gift that had saved his life time and time again (even before his mutant gift manifested), though it had not been enough to save his family. ‘We need your good eyes, Max,’ his uncle used to say to him when they were on the run from Warsaw. His eyes had allow him to observe when acting was dangerous, helped him to feed his family when they were starving in a ghetto, and even though he had a different gift he relied on now, he still used his eyes to judge people. As soon as he put his penetrating gaze on Elaina Cohen, he knew he had misjudged her. If he was honest with himself, Magneto would have admitted he had expected the woman to be little more than a politician’s trophy wife. He had expected to see someone weak. Yet, as soon as he saw her, he knew all such assumptions had made were wrong.

Magneto could barely see Elaina through the mounds of heads between them, but when she turned around to face the crowed of people behind her, he could tell a great deal about her even from a distance. She was no one’s trophy wife, though it may have appeared differently in public. From the moment he could see her brown eyes, he could see the woman had a quiet sort of strength about her, the kind you had to look hard to see. Perhaps she had never even noticed herself or only just discovered it in the midst of the current situation, but it was obvious to the pair of blue eyes fixed on her in the back of the courtroom. He had seen before, though not recently. Yes, he could tell the accusations and the trial had taken their tole on Elaina, but they had not broken her. The thought alone of what could happen to her in the next few moments would have been enough to drive some people to their limit, but the one seated in the defendant’s chairs sat gracefully in place, her body angled toward her husband with a reserved look on her face. The couple was whispering to one another (something only they could hear) when the trial reconvened.

Horrorshow watched the stern-faced judge re-enter the room and stood next to his seat above everyone else with Lady Justice, blindfolded and balancing her scale, just behind him. Seconds later, twelve more people filed into their places on the judge’s right side. No one had said a word yet, but as the rest of the room momentarily rose, he could guess from the look on the juror’s faces what was coming. ‘What a load of bullshit,’ he mentally cursed. Even though he wasn’t there to fight anyone, could have easily snapped some necks at that moment. He could take one look at the skinny women in the defendant’s chair and tell poisoning little old ladies was not her thing. From the looks of her, he doubted if she swatted files outside of the hospital environment. It had been her own bad luck to be in the hospital room when the old lady died and her own stupidity to try and mess with the security cameras days later so no one would notice. Of course, ignorance was a crime in and of itself, but punishable by a good, old-fashioned ass kicking, not what he had the feeling was about to happen. In the seconds that it took for everyone to sit and the judge to start talking, Horrorshow couldn’t help but think lady Justice was not the only blind person in the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” the judge asked in his most official voice.

“We have, your honor,” the foreperson, a tall man with greying hair, answered.

Every eye in the room watched as a tiny piece of paper was transferred from the man who had just spoken to a uniformed officer. When the object was again handed off to the judge, he read it with an expressionless look on his face. No one else likely could see the subtle change in the black-robed man in the center of the room, but Magneto could. He noticed his back straighten up as he read Elaina’s fate. The look on his face became even more stern than it had been moments ago and, from the small change, the man in the back of the room could tell a lot. He could tell the young woman’s moments of freedom were numbered and that the judge thought what he was doing was justice. It never ceased to amaze him would people could bring themselves to believe. Gullible men like him were the reason the man was who he was, the kind that would have believed Hitler was a great man when he said he’d make Germany great again, all by getting rid of the Jews. Magneto couldn’t help but feel badly for her being at the mercy of someone like him. In some small way, he understood her pain.

While the rest of the people watched the judge hand the verdict back to the officer, Horrorshow focused on Elaina. Even though the drama was about to begin, he had a job to do. So far, he hadn’t been able to sense the woman’s gift… or lack there of. He knew untrained mutants often showed their ability during moments of high stress and if she wasn’t under enough already, she was certainly about to be.

“The defendant will rise,” the judge ordered. Horrorshow started to focus even harder as Elaina quietly obeyed the command. Seconds later, the officer started to read.

“In the case of the state of New York verses Elaina Cohen, we the jury find the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter.”

“Thank you, ladies and gentleman of the jury, for your work today. Sentencing will commence one week from today. Until then, the defendant will remain in the custody of the state.”

And, with one dramatic and unnecessary pounding of the judge’s gavel, it was all over for most of the people in the courtroom. The show was over. The officer who read the verdict wasted very little time approaching his new prisoner. Elaina turned to the side, cooperating without question as he cuffed her hands behind her back and led her out of the room to a holding cell. In a few hours, she would be taken to prison. All of this was for a crime she didn’t commit. The young woman barely had time to whisper something the men in the back of the room couldn’t hear to her husband before she vanished from the sight of the spectators. 

In the seconds before Elaina was lead out of the room, Magneto felt it. It was something he hadn’t experienced in years, but he could still remember: fear. Not normal fear, like a child caught in a storm, but the crippling, all consuming emotion that followed him around most of his childhood. The kind of fear he felt when he felt when he and his family were running from Nazi’s, the kind of fear he felt the night before the bullets when through the skulls of his mother, his father, his uncle, and his sister, and the kind he fear he felt each and every day after that for years in Auschwitz, moving the bodies of his own people that were little more than skin and bones, into giant furnaces so that their smell and their ashes filled the camp. The sights were practically nothing compared to the distinct smell of burning flesh or the sound of women and children in the gas chambers when they realized they weren’t there for a shower. Most people never knew this kind of fear, but Magneto did. He sat earily still in his seat, reliving what all of these things had been like until Elaina was out of sight and Horrorshow spoke to him, pulling him violently out of the almost trance-like mental state he was in.

“What a fucking circus,” his low voice filled the back of the room.

Magneto scoffed at his choice of language. “Did you at least get the answer I paid you for?”

“Everyone in the entire damn room got it,” Horrorshow replied curtly, his eyes momentarily passing over the herd of people who were now leaving the room. “What just happened, that was all her. The pawns felt it. I felt it. You felt it too, Magnus.”

Magneto didn’t reply, not for a long moment. He let the gravity of what Horrorshow had just told him sink in. what he had just felt, the memories and the hear, had all been the product of the young, think woman who had been sitting in the defendant’s chair a moment ago. Of course, he already knew it hadn’t been intentional, that being the wife of a politician and a nurse had likely given her very little time to even think about her mutation. Like many others he had encountered in the past, Elaina had tried to hide her gift. Yet, there were times that even those most adept and hiding it could not. Her genes had been there, telling her to fight back while the court’s officer put her in chains. Today, she had fought against her base instincts, but he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if she were to give in to them.

“She made the entire room feel what she was feeling,” Magneto mused aloud.

“My guess would be she could make anyone feel anything she wanted, if she knew how,” Horrorshow elaborated. “It’s a good thing we have helmets…”

“That could be useful.”

“Does that mean I need to get my hammer and organize a prison break? I haven’t done that in a while.”

“No,” Magneto replied. “That won’t be necessary, not now anyway.”

“She’s going to prison, Magnus. Probably for a long time.”

“So I’ll know exactly where to find her if I change her mind.”

“Did you even look at her?” Horrorshow asked. “A skinny little spoiled housewife like her locked up with murderers? She’ll be dead in a week. If her cellmate doesn’t carve her out a new face, she’ll find a way to do it herself.”

“I don’t think so,” Magneto retorted. “You felt what she just did.”

“Sheer dumb beginner’s luck, Magnus. Just because her mutation showed itself just now doesn’t mean it will every time big Bertha comes calling.”

“Then she’ll learn to survive regardless. She would never join us now, not willingly. Once she learns what power she has, the lengths people would go to take it, and that its worth protecting, that’s when you’ll bring her to me. Not before.”

“What makes you think she’ll learn any of this behind bars?”

“Because it’ll be all she has left,” Magneto said, quietly glancing at his arm and remembering the number there, inked into his skin.

Horrorshow unceremoniously got out his chair, his knuckled clenched until they were white. He had the nearly uncontrollable urge to throw a punch at something. When Daniel Cohen passed and threw a vaguely curious glance his way, he almost lost the already thread thin hold he had on his ever-mounting temper. The slick bastard looked as though he could have used it. He didn’t look nearly as phased as he should have for a man who was likely only going to be able to see his wife through glass for the next several years in Horrorshow’s opinion. As mush as he would have enjoyed feeling his fist colliding with the soft skin of Daniel’s face, he held it back. He could have also punched Magneto. There were times when the chip on his shoulder made him as blind as the people who decided Elaina’s fate and this was one of those times. He didn’t have to say another word to know what the man had planned for the young woman and it infuriated him. He normally didn’t care enough to have an opinion on Magneto’s plans, but something about this situation was different and made him care enough to be angry.

“You want to make her into another you, Magnus,” Horrorshow said as he walked away. He knew there was no arguing with him and his only two options were to punch him in the jaw or to walk away before he did something he would regret. Just this once, though he didn’t even fully understand why, he decided to go for the later option. “You want her to suffer and learn to hate everyone and everything like you do, but not everyone is like that… like everyone thinks that way. Maybe jail will change her, maybe it won’t and banking on that is cruel. It makes you no better than the people that put her there. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

With those words, Horrowshow walked out the door. By the time he left, people in the courtroom had filed their way out as well. Magneto remained seated all alone in the once filled room, however, his mind buzzing. The man that accompanied him simply didn’t understand… no one understood. It wasn’t that he wanted Elaina to suffer at the hands of humans. The fact was that he desperately wanted her gift. He wanted her to use it against those that wanted to exterminate the mutant race and he wanted to be there to watch it. Even though the day was far off, he could already see it: enemies dropping to their knees in front of Elaina, paralyzed with fear before they could even fire a warning shot and him next to her to finish the job.

As he stood up to leave the room, Magneto knew his new vision for the future involving Elaina Cohen was precarious. He knew there was no way she would agree to join him now, but had faith that time would allow her to se things from a different perspective. Of course, it would take some time, but he was a patient man. Sooner or later, the man was confident he would get what he wanted. There was nothing he could do now but wait and continue the fight with the people he had. He would forget this woman and what she had done until the time was right. After all, it wasn’t as if he was a stranger to loss… or forgetting, pushing the horrors in his past down in order to continue living. At times, simply existing was one of the ways he revenged himself on those that had tried to kill him but failed. This quiet type of fighting was a start and it was one of the things he knew Elaina would learn in the time she spent locked up. Once she had this, he would be waiting to teach her more. He would be waiting to accept her and watch her become more and more powerful until their race took their proper place above human. Then they could finally be assured a slaughter like he had experienced as a boy would never happen again.


	2. First Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Story shifts to first person (Elaina's point of view.) Seven years after the prologue, Elaina wakes up in a strange place she's never been before...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for returning for Chapter One. A/N. I intend for most of this story to be in first person point of view (namely Elaina’s) but when I feel it’s important or wanted, I could be convinced to add more third person chapters like the prologue. Just review and say so ☺

Chapter One: First Sight

I felt it before I could see it. Suddenly, I knew someone was coming. Someone… calm. All I could discern from a distance was an unnerving sense of calm. Then again, I supposed it was easy to maintain a grip on emptions from the other side of the situation. That is, on the other side of the bars. I should've been used to it after so many years in prison, but the place I was in frightened me. I had no idea where I was, who was responsible for bringing me here, or what they wanted, but I had the feeling I was about to find out. There was nowhere to hide. The footsteps we're getting closer, I could tell by he sound reverberating off of the bare metal walls. As the person (I could only assume it was the one that brought me here) came closer, I could feel something else. Anticipation. I had never fully learned how to use my gift, the times it worked were mostly freak accidents that I couldn’t explain and I hadn’t truly tried to use it in a long time but I could feel this. Quiet, just under the surface, and reserved but it was definitely there. Whoever it was wanted to see me, even if mentally they might not have even admitted it to themselves.

Then I saw him: calm anticipation. A pair of blue eyes met mine and I felt even more uneasy than before. I could tell he was slightly older than me, but not by much and only because of the few flecks of grey hair that suck out against the dark brown of the rest. Other than that, he looked like he had just stepped out of a black-and-white movie. His hair was carefully styles and his red button down shirt and dress pants, both fitted so well that they looked like they had been made only for him. His appearance only served to remind me of how disheveled I must have looked. The dress I had on had once been one of my favorites, a light blue Calvin Klein dress with a neckline that scooped down in the center, but came up to my neck on the sides. It had fit like the man’s clothes on the day of my trial, but now it hung off me so much that the shoulders slumped and it was probably so dirty, a dry cleaning would not have saved it, but the garment was all I had. I didn't dare look down at my own clothes or the stains. Instead, I fixed my eyes on the man in front of me. He looked back at me like he knew. He knew what I could do and didn't seem angry or disgusted, the chain reactions I was used to.in fact, if anything, he looked intrigued by it.

"Hello Elaina,"

I consider myself fairly adept at hiding my emotions when the occasion called for it. Maybe it was a side effect of my gift… maybe it was something else. Either way, it had saved my life more times than I can count over the past seven years. I may have even ventured is far is to think it came natural to me until the moment he spoke. 'Hello Elaina' in his strange accent like he had just walked up to me on the street… like we knew each other… like the situation was not what it was it was: me on one side of the bars and him on the other. I was at a loss for words in response. All I could manage in that moment was to continue working him in the eye, the expression on my face no doubt showing the emotions running through my head.

"I apologize for your waking up down here," I blinked and heard him speak gently. "I had planned on having you moved upstairs to room, but I had to be assured first that you weren't a danger to us."

"Us? "When I found my voice again, all I could do with repeat his last word incredulously.

"Yes, Elaina, us. Myself and the others that live here. "

"How exactly am I threat to you? "I asked, my mind finally catching up with the situation as the shock started to wear off. My tone showed more anger than I should have allowed in the presence of a total stranger, especially one that held such power over me.

"Your gift, of course," he explained just as calm as before. His tone was just as calm as it was before. Clearly, my anger had no effect on him. 'Why should it?' the logical part of brain screamed at me, it's less joining the situation. 'You’re at his mercy for God’s sake.' "Sensing and controlling emotions is a powerful gift, Elaina, one that might unnerve some. 

"Is that why I'm here? "I thought of the man, Bollivar Trask, who had come to the prison every so often with a machine looking for mutants. The guards thought we didn’t know, but rumors traveled fast that he was no lawyer looking to take up some cases as community service. The word among inmates grew to say he even had a device in his briefcase that could detect us. I never saw it myself, but I watched quietly as more and more people were taken away to meet with him, never to come back. All the while, I couldn’t escape the sickening feeling that the people I watched be taken away were going to die.

"Yes, but perhaps not for the reasons you’re thinking "

With those words, I recalled something else. Another woman, my first cellmate me in prison, had told me about groups of mutants around, hiding in plain sight together. Maybe that’s what the man meant when he said ‘us.’ I had never expected to see one. If I was honest, I had not allowed myself to think of the future in years. Anyone serving time would know that that way of thinking was a death sentence, faster and more swift then the words of any judge. Yes, I had taught myself to block out everything that might happen, thoughts of the past in my life before, and hope of ever regaining what I lost. Just as foreign to me as thinking about the future was the situation at hand: standing in front of another creature like me… knowing what he was and knowing that he knew what I was. Yet, judging from the metal bar separating us, I could expect the same treatment from my own kind as I had already suffered at the hands of humans.

"What do you want from me? "I finally spat. The blue-eyed man remained inwardly calm, but on the outside he raced a single incredulous eyebrow at me, as if the pretest my tone.

"I don’t want anything from you, not that you have much to give at the moment if I did,” he began smoothly glossing over the half-insult. "What I want is to help you.”

I couldn't restrain my reaction and, admittedly, I didn't even try. No sooner had the man finish his sentence; the air between us was field with my laughter. I looked him strait in the eye and laugh darkly. He wanted to help me. The very concept was field with an ironic humor to me. This man wanted to help me, like my lawyer had wanted to help me, like the prison guards wanted to help me… like my own husband had wanted to help me. All of them had promised to help me, to protect me, to support me, and each failed miserably. The pair of eyes in front of me would be no different, safe for one thing: he would never have my faith to break. I had no more to give. 

“A lot of men have made me a lot of promises from the other side of bars and they’ve all lied to my face. What could you possibly do to prove to me that you are any different from them?”

A rumbling sound filled the air. The man slowly raised his hand and the noise grew louder. I instinctively took a step back, not knowing what he planned on doing. My eyes didn't leave his, feeling intense focus and concentration radiate from him, until the bars started to move. Within seconds, both sides of the metal enclosing me shifted, leaving a gap in the cell entrance. I didn’t move toward it. I stared at it, knowing it was big enough for me to shimmy through. Yet, I kept looking at the man and back at the hole in the bars not moving an inch. Surely, there had to be some catch to his opening the door, something he wanted from me. I wasn't planning on moving until I knew why he was willing to help me.

"You expect me to walk out of here and not run away from you? "I asked curtly.

"No, "he responded coolly. "I expect that, before you start running, you will careful give thought to where exactly you would run to. "

I mentally cursed. He had me there. I knew I wasn't welcome in the home I had built with my husband and my son. Every living member of my family thought I had broken God’s and men’s law by committing murder. None of the places I had ever called home wanted anything to do with me. Yet, that wasn't the worst feeling. There was something, in the dark forbidden corner of my mind that I seldom admitted to myself existed, that was far worse… worse than watching someone die, worse than spending seven years in prison away from my only child, and worse than being on the street afterward sleeping in abandoned cars outside of cheap bars. It was the feeling that, although I was innocent of the crime, that I deserved the punishment. Being treated like a criminal for so long had made me actually start to believe it… believed that I belonged behind bars.

I was a criminal whose family had disowned her, and whose husband had long since married a younger; thinner blonde who had taken my place. It was then that it occurred to me that I have nothing to loose. What if the blue-eyed man meant to kill me? I couldn’t think of a single person that would morn me. Even if I hadn’t been born into the Jewish faith, I would not have believed in hell. What I had suffered over the years had to be far worse than any Christian place of damnation. So, I wasn’t exactly afraid to die. In fact, I was almost sure that I would prefer it to the bars in front of me. Whether he was lying or telling me the truth no longer seemed to matter in the face of my most recent realization. I took a reserved step toward the man and the bars before I broke the silence in his makeshift prison.

“Lead the way.”

The well-dressed man turned his back to me and started walking. I managed to turn sideways, escaping the cell through the hole he made between the bars, and fell into step behind him. Soon, we reached the heavy-looking metal door that I speculated led out of the prison area. Even from behind, I could tell that he barely moves his right arm before the door slid open. For a moment, I was in awe. I could see how thick the door was, seemingly pure metal, and he had moved it without touching it or even straining. No doubt that my face showed how dumbstruck I was when he finally glanced back at me. As quickly as I could, I wiped the expression from my face. Any other person like me (any other mutant) would have probably been unimpressed by the display, but I had seen so little of what others could do that the slightest things were still new to me. The sentiment was almost like a newborn discovering its feet for the first time. I realized how immature it must have seemed and I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassment rush to my face.

Thankfully, the man turned back away from me by the time the last realization hit me. He began walking up the stairs that were just beyond the metal door. He never said a word. I, however, followed behind with a new question popping into my head with practically every step. How many made up the others he had mentioned? What could they do? Should I be as unnerved by them as he said they were by me? How exactly did a person learn to exercise such control over their ability as moving bars or a metal door? Was it something I could learn to do with what went on in my head? With every step, I could not help but wonder….

The staircase that led up from the prison led to a hallway. There were several doors on both sides, but each of them was closed with no indication I could see of what was inside of them. The feeling that I was definitely outnumbered grew with each door we passed. In my mind, I imagined all of the identical entrances opening at once and finding myself surrounded by the mutants that lived inside. Of course, such an ambush would not have been necessary. In the physical condition I was in, weak and malnourished, the blue-eyed man could have easily killed me himself without the assistance of anyone else. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that it didn’t matter, and kept my eyes on the stranger until he finally stopped in front of one of the doors.

With the small flick of his hand I had seen twice before, one of the doors in the hallway opened. As the man moved immediately inside the space, I took a good loo around before I followed. From my first glance inside the room, it was obvious it was not a personal room he used often. It was a very bare office space, not decorated with seasonal flowers and photographs of family like mine at the hospital had been. Things like that would have given me a clue to the man inside, but it was obvious he wasn’t having any of that. The furniture was all made of metal (which was no surprise) and only consisted of a desk and two chairs. For adornment, there was only a Newton’s cradle in the center of the desk. Seeing the object, it struck me that the one item in the room was a lie. Newton’s law called for an equal and opposite reaction for every action, a give and take of kinetic energy. Yet, this man knew so much more about me than I did him, the sides would never balance equally.

“Come in and have a seat, Elaina,” the blue-eye man beckoned from behind the metal desk.

‘Fine. What the hell.’ I thought to myself in response. ‘I’ve come this far without being axe-murdered, I might as well see it through.’

As uninviting as the cold office space was, at least there was no bars. I walked inside and sat down in the seat on the opposite side of the desk. For a moment, I looked down at Sir Isaac’s cradle and decided that if I had any hope of finding out anything about the mystery man, this was my first chance to level out the sides of the situation. In order to achieve this, I had to make the first move.

“Earlier, you said you wanted to help me,” I recounted quietly. “What did you mean exactly?”

“As I said before, you have a powerful gift… one that I know you can’t control. What I am offering you is the chance to learn to be something more than you have ever been before… to do one thing that makes you different from the people you’ve associated with in the past.”

“And what is that exactly?” I asked.

“To evolve, Elaina. Let your mind do what the rest of you has been doing since the day you were born.”

I paused my interrogation, allowing his words to fully sink in for a moment before continuing my attempt to balance the sides of the Newton’s cradle between us.

“Teaching me to control my mutation sounds like a lot of work on your part. Eventually, you would want something in return?”

“Not exactly,” he began. “I’m not interested in what you can do for me, but rather what you could do for our entire race. You’ve seen now what humans think of us first-hand. If they had their way, we’d all be in death camps or in laboratories being experimented on. What you’ve been though is only the beginning if we continue to let them rule us, of that much I can assure you. Here, in this place, I have a group of us willing to fight back against those who want to harm us. I’ve brought you here hoping you would join us.”

“Death camps? Experiments? You’re not talking about a fight, you’re talking about a war,” I reasoned aloud. “I’m no solider. I can’t fight, I can barely throw a punch.”

“Not being prepared for a war won’t save you from being caught in it anymore than not knowing how to fight will keep you from being attacked on the street. War has a tendency to prey on the innocent and unprepared, I think you know that.”

At that point, I decided that I had gone back and forth with him long enough. He could sit behind a table and talk all night long and he would accomplish nothing. It was obvious that he was good at swaying conversation his way. I even thought he would have given my ex-husband a run for his money in the world of politics and, although some of words did resonate with me, it was not enough. After so many broken promises, I needed action. I needed to know something about him.

“Yes, I know that,” I granted. “What I don’t know is how you know that.”

“Let’s just say I’ve seen my fair share of war,” the man replied shortly. As he spoke, I could sense the first subtle shift in his emotions since I’d seen him walking toward my cell. It was the mental equivalent of trying to build a brick wall around his brain. He hadn’t said more than a complete sentence about himself and he was getting defensive. I didn’t know why or what I could have possibly said, but it was obvious I had hit a nerve. It wasn’t until a few moments later that I knew just what I had gotten myself into. I watched silently as the man looked directly into my eyes for a long second. He was searching for something, but with my underdeveloped gift, I had no idea what he hoped to find. Regardless of the test, I realized that I must have passed it. The man finally looked away from me, and then quickly put one of his arms on the table where I could see it and rolled up the sleeve of his expensive-looking red shirt up to his elbow.

I would have never guessed what I would I see when I looked down at the stranger’s bare arm and, once I saw it, I was completely taken aback. There were no words to describe it. My breath caught. I suddenly felt like a little like I might loose what little I had eaten in the past twelve hours, but the majority of me held back tears. While I may not have trusted him, I instantly knew that the man truly believed every word he had said to me that night. This was the reason for the mental wall and all the talk about a war. The situation made more sense that it did before. Yes, he had obviously seen his fair share of racial war and groups with more in common that not exterminating the other.

214782\. The numbers were inked onto the skin of his forearm. I didn’t need to ask questions to know what he had seen. Growing up, I had heard the stories everywhere I went. They followed the Jewish people around like a plague (one that we were unfortunately not immune to.) Now, it was right in front of me and I couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors. I looked away from his arm and around the room, knowing the blue-eyed man probably expected a verbal reaction. Even as I made an attempt to speak, I knew my mouth would not open. Anything I could have said would not have mattered or been anything he had not heard before. I was looking at the effect hatred had inflicted on one of the races I belonged to and now the other was under attacked. Society had learned absolutely nothing since the day those numbers were etched into the man’s arm. If I had learned nothing else the past seven years, this truth rang loud enough for all the rest in the presence of someone who had suffered far more than I had.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now, Elaina,” he at last broke the silence in the room, which had only been punctuated only by the back and forth of the Newton’s cradle for the past several moments. “You’re welcome to stay here until you’ve had some time to think it over. I’ve arranged for you to have a room down the hall… and there should be something to eat there now. I know you must be starving.”

There wasn’t a word in his final two sentences that didn’t beckon to nearly every part of me. I hadn’t slept in a bed since my release that wasn’t attached to a truck and just the mention of food brought my attention back to my empty stomach. I needed to eat and sleep, but how could I accept his offer? How could I stay in a place filled with strangers… mutant strangers all with powerful abilities they had complete control over? How could I eat their food and have nothing to give in return? I hoped the years the man sitting in front of me spent in a Concentration Camp had given him his fill of death by poisoning. He didn’t seem the kind to use such a method of homicide. ‘Then again,’ I reminded myself, ‘there are plenty of people out there who think it’s yours.’

With that thought, it hit me. The answer to all of my mental questions was the same: because I was desperate. In my whole life, I had never been in a position where I didn’t have a roof over my head and at least some kind of food on the table but, at that moment, that was exactly where I was. My conviction would follow me the rest of my life. No matter where I went, the chances of making a normal living and having a normal life were slim at best. If I was going to make it, I was going to have to learn how to make it another way. Perhaps I was lucky not to be normal. I had never thought of my mutation that way until then. As a teenager, I was afraid of it and as a convicted murder, I hated it. I had spent years cursing it and blaming it for taking my normal life away from me. Now, it was the only reason the man in front of me was offering me help. I doubted I would ever trust him completely, but he had been right when he said I needed to evolve beyond my past.

“Shall I show you to your room?” He asked quietly, without a trace of judgment in his voice.

Not knowing what else to do or what other option I had, I nodded and stood up quietly. I was accepting his help for now, but I still couldn’t find it within myself to say it aloud. The man didn’t press the issue, only taking a moment to roll his shirtsleeve back down before he rose from his chair as well. Within seconds, I was trailing behind him again out of his office and back into the hallway of identical doors. We had spent so long in the one room, I half expected to see at least one other mutant walking about the hall. But, when we started moving past the doors again, there was just the mystery man and I for as far as I could see.

Five doors down on the opposite side of the hallway from the office, we stopped again. He opened the door with his mutation as he had before. The only difference was he grabbed the door handle when it approached him. He was holding the door open for me. It occurred to me then no one else was going to be in this room. It had been quite a long time since I had anything to myself. I didn’t pause to look around as I had before. My head was already on the verge of spinning from everything I had learned in the past five minutes. If I had stopped, I might have objected, but I simply didn’t have it in me… not then, anyway. I passed the man and took a few steps into the room. Without even glancing at it, I turned around and faced the man who was still just standing there, watching me and holding the door open.

“You should find everything you need in here,” he said as his parting words. “Rest well, Elaina.”

He started to let go of the doorknob when I decided there was room in my swimming head for one last little bit of information.

“Wait,” I interjected.

“What is it?” he asked. He raised his arm slightly and I could tell he was now holding open with his gift.

“I… don’t even know your name,” even I had to admit, it childish as soon as I said it, but I had to start somewhere to get to know the man whose hospitality I was taking advantage of.

“To everyone here, I go by Magneto.”

With those words a finishing flourish of his hand, the door closed and the man disappeared from my sight.


	3. Meet Horrorshow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaine meets Magneto's partner-in-brotherhood, Horrorshow, from the prologue.

Chapter Two: Meet Horrowshow

The rest of my first evening in the compound belonging to the man who called himself Magneto consisted of only two things: first, I found the desk in the far corner of the room with a tray on top of it. I lifted the domed, metal top off it and the smell of food bombarded me. It was not a sandwich and not greasy leftovers from a bar, which was enough to have me salivating. The tray top came off and revealed chicken Parmesan, complete with bread and a glass of red wine on the side. Clearly, Magneto’s wardrobe was not the only fancy, cultured thing around the place. Not even taking a single second to question who had made the food or how they knew it was one of my favorite dishes in another life, I ate every bite of the far-too-large-to-be-a-single-serving plate in front of me. Then, I sipped the wine until every drop in the glass was gone. When I finished, all I could see was the large bed protruding out of the middle of the adjacent wall. Again, not even taking the time to question it, I went strait from the desk chair to the beckoning bed. I kicked my heels off, not bothering to undress, and got under the rose-colored duvet. Whether it was having a full stomach for the first time in weeks, the wine, pure exhaustion, or a sedative hidden in something I had eaten or drank, I was fast asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow.

I slept long and hard until my body decided it has rested its fill. It was only after that I fully started to explore the room. Like Magneto’s office, it was much more practical than decorative. The walls were painted a soft ivory, light but not enough to be blinding to look at. There was the desk and chair I had sat in to eat the night before and another wall with shelved built into it, practically calling out to be filled with books. A sleek, metal nightstand on the right side of the bed completed my mental list of furniture in the space. No artwork on the walls, no knickknacks on the shelves, and no pictures or alarm clock on the night table. The room was essentially a blank canvas, waiting to be filled. I quietly wondered if Magneto expected me to be the artist.

Apart from the entrance my mysterious benefactor had disappeared through the night before, there were two more doors in the room. Once my bare feet hit the floor, my curiosity was too much not to open them. There was no way I could refrain from doing it. Door number one (only because it was closer to me at the time) was a spotless full bath. I could see the full vanity mirror, toilet, and a large bathtub the old me couldn’t help but imagine filled with bubbles and a glass of Muscato on the edge of it after a long day at the hospital. Yet, after taking in the view a second longer, it occurred to me that there was no option to shower. My lips curled in thought as I wondered if it was a clue into who Magneto was. I imagined it was a question for the ages, what could you tell about a man based on his bath or shower preference until I remembered the one vital piece of information that I did know about him: the numbers on his arm. The little wine haze I had left cleared from my brain as I started to contemplate all the horrible memories a showerhead held for someone like him. More than likely, I decided, it was likely an effort to avoid flashbacks rather than a style choice.

I breathed in a sight of frustration and decided to move on to door number two. Behind this door was one of every woman’s no-so-secret desires: a spacious walk-in closet. Unlike the bath or the room itself, this space was full and it instantly struck me as odd: Magneto (or whoever he had to do this sort of thing for him) hadn’t spent time decorating a room but had shopped for me? Was this some kind of joke or game I didn’t understand? From the looks of it, he had bought out Calvin Klein. It had been so long since I’d worn nice clothing that I doubted that I would be able to access any answers (or his taste) even from a full closet. Nonetheless, I was determined to try. This was something that my confused mind could handle. I told myself there was no harm in looking at the clothes, even if I didn’t wear them or they belonged to someone else.

With new resolve, I pulled out the first garment that caught me eye and brought it into the light of the larger room. A gasp escaped my lips. Suddenly, the air felt thin and my palms were so sweaty, I had trouble holding on to the hanger. I knew instantly that, in fact, Magneto didn’t shop for me and knew that the clothes didn’t belong to someone else. The reason I knew all of these things was because the dress I pulled out was mine. I was holding the silky, low cut red dress that I had bought to wear out for a night of dinner and theater with my husband for our three-year wedding anniversary. After taking a deep breath and repressing the memory that was now more like a battle wound, I let the red fabric hit the floor and decided to pull out something else. I tried to tell myself that it could all just be a coincidence, that more than one sexy red dress existed out there in the world until I was what I pulled out next. This time, it was a mint-green sweater my mother had given me for Hanukah the year my son was born, right down to the tiny spit-up stain on the left shoulder from the first time I’d worn it. The sight of the sweater and what it represented almost brought tears to my eyes. I had gotten used to fighting them, but this battle was stronger than ones I had before.

On and on, piece-by-piece, my old wardrobe presented itself hung neatly in Magneto’s closet until it became a messy pile on his floor. From my everyday dress pants and blouses to my no-so-modest collection of evening gowns, I could account for virtually every single piece of clothing I’d owned on the day I went to prison. I should have stopped, but something (my inner masochist most likely) made me go on. With each piece of fabric, I remembered something else, followed almost instantaneously by the fact that those days and that part of my life was over. My own personal pity party lasted longer than I would have admitted later until I had the good sense to feel something else: anger. I felt anger toward myself, but mostly, I chose to be angry with the person I blamed for my momentary mental break: Magneto. I wasn’t sure how it was possible to feel so violated by someone I didn’t trust as far as I could have thrown that expensive red shirt he had been wearing the night before, but somehow I did. New questions suddenly occurred to me ‘How long had he had my clothes?’ ‘Had he had someone to break into my house and steal them while I was locked up?’ ‘Had he or his people hurt Daniel in the process?’ ‘Had they gone near my son?’

The number on Magneto’s arm, his proposition, the room, and the presence of my entire old wardrobe coupled together was all too much. There was no way I could stay here, even though I had no place else to go and few options with a felony conviction on my record. I had given him no strait answer the night before. He could kidnap me and try to mess with my head until doomsday. Depending on the day and my mood, he could do as he liked with my ex-husband as well. But as long as there was even the possibility that he had cast his strange blue eyes in my son’s direction, his offer to help me was void. I would never allow him to drag my little boy into his war. Seven years ago, I would not have even considered it for myself either. If I was honest with myself, wasn’t sure if I had actually been contemplating it… or just that desperate for a meal and a clean place to sleep. That was an entirely real possibility in my current situation.

Whether it was the prospect of food or some dark part of my mind that wanted to see Trask pay for what he had done after years of watching him prey on vulnerable, locked up women, it was all irrelevant now. I had to leave. Quickly. Taking a last look down at the giant pile of my clothes, I decided that it wouldn’t do any harm to change out of my dirty dress before moving on. Moving as fast as I could, I stripped down and put on a pair of black dress pants (which still fit thanks to a belt) and a lavender button-down shirt. While I fumbled with the last few buttons, I caught a glimpse of my favorite long, black trench coat with buttons going down the sides. I decided to slide it on as well, that it might be practical for the cool nights wherever it was I ended up. After sliding on a pair of almost flat dress shoes, I opened the door and prepared to leave. 

Thankfully, there was still no one in the long hallway of identical doors. Magneto had told me the night before I could leave (though I didn’t have anywhere exactly to run to), but he had also failed to mention the vast amount of fabric skeletons in his closet. Therefore, I wasn’t going to risk advertising my exit to any of his ‘others.’ I made my way down the hallway in the opposite direction of the door that I remembered led downstairs to the prison. There was a door in the center of the wall at the end of the hallway that I quickly decided was my target. My hand turned the cool metal of doorknob with no idea if it was another bedroom, an office, led outside, or if it would even open. Upon turning it and hearing the characteristic opening click, I knew at least one of my concerns was mitigated. Beyond the door was yet another flight of stairs. I began ascending the stairs, all the while wondering if I could actually pull of an escape undetected (my last attempt had certainly turned into a complete debacle.) Though I didn’t know the answer to my mental inquiry, I was determined to try.

As I approached the top of the stairs, I could hear voices. ‘Damn it,’ I mentally cursed. It occurred to me that the lower floor was probably so quiet and seemingly unoccupied because it was mostly bedrooms (plus Magneto’s office space.) The upper floor I was approaching must have been the main living area and, judging by the increasing volume of the voices, the others were conscious and they were many. I couldn’t fight them all off if they tried to stop me, but I remembered the pile of clothes in the room I had slept in and knew I couldn’t go back. I didn’t know how or even when, but somehow I was going to see my son. Fighting wasn’t an option, but sneaking was. If there was one thing my fellow inmates in prison had taught me (other than not to think about the future), it was that being invisible was sometimes better than being seen. If there was a dark corner, I would fit into it. I would be so light on my feet; they would never even know I existed. ‘I can do this,’ I told myself ‘I’ll get through. I can do this.’

My mental pep talk to myself turned out to all be for nothing. With two steps to go, the door above me opened to reveal a tall, large-built man with his head close shaved. He looked at me and frowned momentarily before he spoke.

“Well well well, look who finally decided to grace us with her presence.”

‘Oh no,’ I mentally replied. My plan to sneak out was ruined before it even began. The man at the top of the stairs was at least twice my size and there were more up there. The only way I would ever stand a chance was my mutation… and I had no clue how to use it properly and I wasn’t about to go solely on Magneto’s word that I could leave. I blinked and met his blue-eyes gaze, mentally willing myself to make my gift work. ‘Think calm,’ I told myself. I chanted it over and over while focusing on the man in front of me. He had to feel my influence. There was no other way.

And it must have worked, because he shook his head and laughed darkly (though it sounded a bit more like a smoker’s cough than amusement) before he spoke again.

“You plan on calming me to death?” he asked annoyed.

“If that’s what it takes,” I retorted.

“And, according to the state of New York, it wouldn’t be t he first time for you,” he spoke and I responded to his taunt with a loathing gaze. “Come on up. Why don’t we take this outside before I become your next victim?”

I started walking up the stairs, not because he told me to but because I was furious. This man was a complete stranger. He didn’t know me and he was already bringing up what people thought I’d done when even Magneto hadn’t spoke of it the night before. They obviously knew the charges, but what else did they know besides obviously where I lived? Did they know I was innocent? Or did they invite me in because they thought I had killed someone? The man I was now standing inches away from didn’t look in any way intimidated by me but, the again, with his size I doubted much phased him.

When I reached the last stair, he turned around and started walking and I carefully fell in step behind him. Thought I didn’t know what he planed on doing to me when we got there, he was leading me outside, which was exactly where I needed to go. Now that I knew more about the layout of the compound, I could come up with a better plan to leave without Magneto leaving. I would wait until the others were asleep, or at least down in the lower level and then I would make my escape. Running in the dark would be harder, but at least no one would be following me. Rather than focusing on my anger, I concentrated on memorizing the way outside for when I put my plan into action. The door led to a large living area and beyond it was yet another hallway. Unlike the one downstairs, however, this one was not all closed off with doors. On my left, I could see a full kitchen and a few more metal doors. I couldn’t guess what they held, but I imagined a large metal dining table and more office space.

But it was on the opposite side of the hall, three doors down from the kitchen that held the larger door that the man in front of me eventually opened. I took a moment away from memorization and eyed him suspiciously. ‘Does he honestly expect me to walk in front of him?’ I asked myself. There were many other circumstances that would have caused me to label the gesture gentlemanly, but this was not one of those instances. He was at least two feet taller than me and could have been armed for all I knew. I was no solider, but even I was smart enough to know how much easier an attack was from behind. That type of attack made up the vast majority of the ones I’d seen in prison. He was at least going to have to look me in the eye when he got me, even if for no other reason than to make me feel like I wasn’t entirely incompetent.

“Fine. Suit yourself,” he grumbled before conceding our staring contest and taking the first step outside. “But you should know I never attack from the rear, that’s some fucking cowardly Napoleon shit. It’s not my style. 

I remained silent while I took my first step outside after him. The sun was shining, but sight, cool bite in the air was a constant reminder that summer would be ending soon. There was green grass and several trees with changing colored leaves around the grounds, all enclosed by a thick metal gate. It reminded me of the large metal door leading out of the prison area I had seen the night before. Not only were my hopes of leaving undetected slipping away yet again, but I started to imagine those large, tall walls closing in on my until I suffocated. It was worse than the sporadic times we were allowed on the barred, concrete grounds of the prison. I might have had my second metal breakdown of the day if the man hadn’t stepped in front of a large tree, turned to face me, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. 

“Smoke?” Once the man had pulled out one for himself, he extended the still mostly full pack in my direction.

“I don’t-“ I started to take a step back and go into my ‘I don’t smoke’ speech from a long time ago until I realized it was a lie. The truth was I started smoking five years ago the same month my divorce was finalized. It became a nervous habit and a way to pass time and, at the moment, it didn’t sound like a bad idea. I took a cigarette from the pack and muttered my thanks as he reached back to his pocket for a lighter.

“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly. “The name’s Horrorshow by the way.”

“I’m Elaina,” I replied after I took the light from him and held it to the end of the tiny tube of nicotine. “Apparently, the only one around here with a normal name.”

“It’s symbolic,” his response came out in a great puff of smoke. “Most of us take new names. When we start embracing who we are, the human ones don’t seem to fit anymore. That’s what most of them will tell you anyway. Some of them actually feel that way; some of them have other reasons. I bet if you stick around, you’ll change yours too.” 

‘Not likely,’ I mentally retorted. I couldn’t imagine changing my name. Throughout m entire life, the good and the bad, I had always been Elaina (or ‘Laina to my husband at times.) To me, the letters were woven into my identity and I couldn’t imagine anything powerful enough to change it. He could be Horrowshow and my host could be Magneto, but I would always be Elaina. To punctate the thought, I took a long puff off of my cigarette before verbally responding to the man in front of me.

“Magneto said I could leave.”

“I ain’t stopping you. Hell, I’ll open the gate and watch you go right now if you want… but if I were you, I’d think about it.”

“What? Where I’m going?” I asked, remembering Magneto’s taunt from the night before.

“No, that’s obvious. I would think about what I wanted. You’re a long way from the Governor’s mansion now, fitting back in there might be harder than you might think.”

“And what do you suggest? That I stay here with total strangers? Thieves who go into my house and steal my clothes?”

My slight rant was interrupted by Horrorshow’s smoky laughter.

“That’s what this is about? You’re leaving because the clothes?” He couldn’t contain that the fact he thought the situation was laughable and that I was little more than an idiot. The observation made me even angrier. My lips curved down and around the cigarette after he continued. “First of all, you were already divorced when I got your clothes, so it wasn’t ‘you house’ at all. Second, for someone as familiar with the system as you, your definition of theft sucks. I though everyone knew once things were on the curb, they’re public property. So legally, I didn’t steal shit.”

“Daniel threw out my clothes?” As much as I didn’t want to believe, to be able to tell him that my ex-husband would never do such a childish, vengeful thing, I couldn’t. After he slid divorce papers through the glass between us, I leaned not to put anything past him.

“Didn’t exactly turn out to be Prince Charming in a three-piece suit, did he?” Horrorshow mocked. “The asshole threw out everything: clothes, shoes, even your mother’s old cook book, complete with recipe for Chicken Parmesan.”

With that, a question I hadn’t even thought to ask was answered. No wonder I had inhaled my portion. The conversation was quickly becoming overwhelming. Although anything to do with my ex-husband was an old wound, learning he had just thrown everything to do with me out stung deep down in my chest. Though I didn’t want him back anymore than he wanted me, the fact remained that we shared a child. For his sake, I tried not to hate Daniel, but I couldn’t deny that it was difficult in times such as those. I decided to change the subject before my emotions sent Horrorshow into a rage I couldn’t control.

“So, you live here? You work for Magneto?” I asked tentatively.

“Me? No, I’m a hired gun. I fight for whoever has the most to offer me. At the moment, that’s Magnus. Next week, it might not be. And since, chances are, I’m not always going to around every time you think about doing something stupid, here’s some free advice: listen good, because I don’t do this often. Magnus has a real fucked up point of view when it comes to the world and the people in it. He’s been looking for someone with the ability to get in and mess with people’s heads for a long time. He’s been watching you and he’s going to go out of his way to make you see things exactly the way he does. No matter what he says, no matter what he offers you, step back and think before you answer. Don’t let him control you… don’t let him make you into something you’re not. Do what you have to do to look out for yourself. There’s always somewhere else to go and a different way to live with what you are. Embrace who you are, but do it on your terms. Now, I’m not going to tell you to stay or to go, all I’m telling you is to do either one for the right reasons. Don’t just stay because you don’t wait to be alone and don’t just go just because of some shit in a closet.”

The man’s honesty completely took me aback. It had been so long since I had a conversation with another person in which they were concerned about me; I wasn’t quite sure how to take it at first. My instincts polluted by seven years locked up, warned me it was a sham. Surely, he expected something in return. Yet, I had nothing to offer. He was a self-proclaimed hired gun and I had absolutely no way to hire him, or pay him fir what he planned to do for me or already done. I knew Magneto wanted me to stay in hopes that my gift might help him save mutants. If I did, no doubt the day would come when it was time to re-pay the debt. He would expect me to fight, possibly even kill. Seven years ago, I would have said I wasn’t capable of such a thing, now I wasn’t sure.

None of this, however, explained Horrorshow. He was a tall enigma with a cigarette between his lips. Nonetheless, he had given me the first solid piece of advice I had received in years. Embrace who I was on my terms… look out for myself. I supposed, in the end, it was all a verbose way of saying, ‘decide what you want.’ It was a task easier said than done. All decisions had been taken away from me for so long, I honestly had no idea what I wanted. All I could think about, the only coherent thought I could form had nothing to do with my mutation, the war to come, or Magneto. Now I was labeled a mutant, but years ago, I labeled myself as something else… something that meant more to me than anything else: a mother.

“I can’t think about all that right now. Right now, there’s only one thing I want,” I confessed as I put my cigarette out on the ground below my feet.

“Your kid?” He asked.

I gave him what I could only hope was a warning look. No matter how honest he was with me, I still didn’t want him anywhere near Ephraim.

“Relax,” Horrorshow responded to my look in an exasperated voice. “No one here is going to hurt him. It’s not our thing and his dad is as human as he can be, so he’s safe from Magnus’ recruiting efforts. If you want to see him, I might be able to help.”

“You just said you were a hired gun and I have nothing to pay you with,” I observed.

“Yes, you do,” he replied. “Don’t tell me you don’t have cash stashed in that fancy, expensive wardrobe of yours.”

I opened my mouth to speak and the stopped. Years ago, I was known to keep some emergency money in the pockets of my clothes, just in case all of the credit cards were somehow all overdrawn (which never happened.) Until that moment, I hadn’t given it any thought. If I had, I would have just assumed my ex-husband had emptied the pockets before he threw them out. Then again, this was a man who didn’t even clean out the pockets of his own suits before he had them dry-cleaned. I decided it was worth a look and slid my hand into the right side of my coat. A second later, I pulled out a crisp, seven year old, hundred dollar bill.

“Told you,” Horrowshow gloated. “We didn’t rob you.”

“If I give you this, you’ll take me to see my son?” I decided to ignore him and get strait to the point. Daniel would have no problem having me thrown back in prison if he saw me near our son and sneaking around anywhere without bars was obviously not my forte. Perhaps the man in front of me could help with that. “You’ll make sure I see him… that his father doesn’t see us.”

“It’s a start.”

“What else do you want?”

“A couple hundred more bucks. Upstate is a long-ass drive and fifty bucks an hour is cheap for my services, believe me. And you owe me a smoke.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Fine. I’ll check the rest of my clothes. Is that all?”

“Well, since I gave you good advice and saved you from your own stupidity today, I’m not really in the mood to cook. I try to limit my good deeds to one per day. If you wanted to return the favor and start pulling your own weight around here, you could take my turn making dinner tonight for everyone.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, slightly wondering to myself how I had left the bedroom with the intention of leaving and, now, I was being asked to cook dinner. Surreal didn’t begin to describe it.

“Just because we’re mutants doesn’t mean we can snap our fingers and put food on the table. “Horrorshow reminded me in a slightly condescending tone. “We split all the domestic shit amongst ourselves. You’ll have to get used to it if you stay. Are you up for it or not?”

“As long as you keep your word and take me to see my son,” I conceded. It truly was all I wanted and if I had to hire a thug to make sure it happened, apparently I was willing.

“Done,” the man agreed. “Meet me out here at 0600 sharp tomorrow morning and you have my word you’ll see your boy. In the meantime, there’s about twelve of us living here, so might want to think about starting dinner soon, else they might get cranky.”


	4. Beef Stew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina makes good on her promise to prepare dinner and, afterwards, discovers some interesting reading in Magneto's library.

Chapter Three: Beef Stew

When I turned to leave the spot Horrorshow and I had just stood at and talked, I couldn’t help but feel disoriented. What was I doing? Furthermore, what was I thinking? Was I actually considering staying in this place? How on earth had I managed to get so sidetracked? Countless questions ran through my mind, but with no answers. The only thing I had possibly achieved was a way to see my Ephraim undetected, and that was taking the word of I man I met all of hours ago. Though my skeptical brain knew it was a long shot, I couldn’t help but hope it was true. Thoughts of my little boy were all I had held on to for so long. My heart raced at the thought of seeing him. All I wanted was one good look at him, to make sure he was safe and happy. His fate meant so much more to me than my own, everything else scurrying along in my mind would simply have to wait.

Everything, of course, except the meal I had just promised to make. His use of vulgar language aside, Horrorshow as right: food did not prepare itself and even my obscenely large portion of Chicken Parmesan from the night before was starting to wear off and leave my stomach empty once again. As a housewife to a husband and a single toddler, I didn’t cook for large crowds even in my past life. Even the largest meals of the year (Thanksgiving and Chanukah) were always equally distributed between myself and either my family or Daniel’s. Preparing my first meal in seven years and for at least twelve people promised to be a daunting task and one that could potentially take hours. Yet, it was one I was determined to accomplish, if for no other reason that to prove to myself that I could.

I walked back into the compound and the short distance to the large, open kitchen. The entire time I spent on maternity leave from my job at the hospital, the kitchen had been my domain. Pots and pans were the tools I used to not feel totally useless. While the baby slept, I cooked to feel like my old self again. Now, I was about to do something similar in a different place. I started to fumble around in the space, opening cabinets and drawers to get my bearings. My mind began to shift from the vast amount of questions I had to what I considered normal problems. ‘What’s for dinner?’ was more my kind of dilemma than any of my mutant problems. Feeding the others and myself was something I could do once I saw everything at my disposal. The refrigerator, cabinets, and pantry were all fully stocked, which made the possibilities virtually endless.

In one of the kitchen’s upper cabinets, I found my family cookbook Horrorshow mentioned he had salvaged from Daniel’s purging of our home. I took out the book and started flipping slowly generations of my ancestor’s dishes: challah, roast chicken, braised brisket, I skimmed through the pages until I stopped at the recipe for beef stew. It was one of my grandmother’s entries and one of the dishes I associated with her the most. When she passed away when I was a teenager, cooking it became a way to honor her. This was comfort food and exactly what I needed in that moment. It wouldn’t solve the growing number of problems surrounding me, but the smell alone would calm me down from my anxious state of mind. I could only hope it would meet with the approval of Magneto and his others.

I quickly washed my hands in the kitchen sink and started taking vegetable from the refrigerator. The counter was soon littered with potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, and a clove of garlic. To that I added the largest cooking pot I could find, a cutting board, and a paring knife. Then, it was time to peel and chop the small garden on my counter. It was menial work and was going to take some time. My mind couldn’t help but to start wondering again with just my hands busy. I wondered if Horrorshow was going to be able to keep his word. I wondered if he could find my Ephraim (though I supposed, since he had already found my former home once, I supposed it should have been the least of my worries.) Most of all, I wondered what it would be like to see my son again after so long. In three more years, he would be celebrating his Bar Mitzvah, becoming a man according to the Jewish faith. I had missed his entire childhood. Even if the unthinkable happened and he saw me tomorrow, he would have no idea who I was… that I was his mother. The thought was enough to bring a tear to the surface of my eye.

“Hello Elaina.”

I heard a voice come from behind me and my paring knife dropped to the floor. Someone else was in the kitchen and I had ben too lost in thought to even hear them coming. Judging by the words and the sound of the voice, it was just anyone either: it was Magneto.

“Hello,” I offered quietly. Without turning around to face him, started to bend down to pick up the knife I dropped, but before I could bend even halfway down, the voice stopped me.

“Let me,” he offered.

I turned around to the side then and watched as Magneto moved the knife from the floor over to the kitchen sink. All it took was the movement of his hand. He never moved from his spot across the room and all I could do was stand at an angle looking from the man to the floating metal object.

“Thank you,” I said after hearing the metallic clang of the small blade colliding with the bottom of the sink.

“You’re welcome” he replied. “What is this?”

“I’m making dinner for everyone, taking Horrorshow’s turn.”

“Why?”

“He’s doing something for me and this is what he asked for in return. It’s kind of personal.”

“I see,” his eyebrows raised momentarily and I immediately knew he was wondering what was so personal. Even though Horrorshow had assured me he would not go after my son, I still didn’t trust the man in front of me. “Just be careful making arrangements with him. He won’t hesitate to betray you if someone outbids you for his services.”

“That’s strange,” I couldn’t help but show a dramatic irony smile.

“What is?”

“You warning me about Horrorshow,” I explained. “He just warned me about you.”

“Did he?” Magneto asked and I could sense a combination of anger and amusement in his voice.

“Yes.”

“What did he say about me?”

“He told me a lot of things.”

“Are you unintentionally being obtuse or do you truly trust a hired and paid for assassin?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” I practically hissed in response. I was angry. It didn’t occur to me until seconds later that I was angry with a man who could control metal in the room the knives were kept. ‘Not a good move, Elaina,’ my brain reminded me. I took a second to recover by walking back to the counter and taking out another paring knife from the drawer. Then, I took a deep breath and reached for the nearest potato. I started to peel it before I spoke again. “Since you asked, Horrorshow isn’t that hard to figure out. He’s easy to predict. He goes where the money is and he’s upfront about it. I don’t trust him, but at least I know what he is.”

“And you don’t think I’m being honest with you, is that it?” Magneto resonated aloud as he approached the kitchen counter and me.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, I hope that, when the time comes, you make your decision based on actions rather than words.”

“I intend to.”

With those words hovering in the air, Magneto reached next to me and opened one of drawers. I watched as he took out another knife, gabbed another carrot, and started to peel it. He was helping me make dinner, something even Daniel had not even offered while we were married. I wondered if it was all a show, if he truly wanted my trust, or both, or possibly a little bit of both. No matter what his reasons, my words remained the truth: I didn’t trust anyone and I didn’t know what to make of him.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said after a long moment of silence.

“I know,” he replied as he continued to work. “You’ve only been here one day. I know it’s a lot to take in and you must have questions about what you’ve seen and what Horrorshow told you. If you’d like, I can answer some of them for you while we work.”

“Okay,” I accepted almost immediately. If he was offering any kind of explanation, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity for answers. I peeled off the outer skin of an onion and began to quarter it as I decided where to begin in the deluge of questions in my head. “Horrorshow said that you’d been watching me. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

The sound of my knife hitting the counter punctuated his short response.

“How long have you watching me?”

“Since your name showed up in the New York Times seven years ago saying you were accused of murder.”

“You knew what I was then?” I asked.

“I had my suspicions. Identifying our kind is one of Horrorshow’s gifts. We came to the last day of your trial and he confirmed for me you were a mutant.”

By then, we had made a small dent in the pile of vegetables I had laid out for the beef stew. I decided to leave the rest of the peeling and chopping to Magneto while I turned my attention to the clove of garlic next to me. If I could have been honest with myself fin that moment, I would have admitted that my anger was starting to surface again, like a rolling bubble just underneath my skin.

“So, you knew who I was and you knew what I was, yet you still decided to let me rot in prison for seven years before you do anything about it.”

“So did the man you were married to.”

“You don’t get to criticize Daniel for doing the same thing you did.”

“I get to criticize anyone who harms a member of my race. Most of them get far worse by the time I’m done with them.” Magneto stopped what he was doing and looked at me with his blue irises. The tone of his retort seemed to be begging me to argue the point with him (a fight he knew he would win.) I couldn’t tell whether his irritation was because of my words or my emotions unintentionally influence him. Either way, the part of my brain that still valued my life told me to back down, but I was determined not to. I continued to meet his gaze. “In any case, I didn’t just leave you there to rot. Some of the other mutants you met, the ones that taught you not to attract attention to yourself, the ones that told you about groups of us they were mine: either members of my brotherhood or ones that owed me a debt. There were very few days in the beginning my eyes were not on you, making sure you survived. I couldn’t stop everything, but it could have been far worse for you, Elaina.”

“So why not save your favors and pay someone like Horrorshow to get me out?”

“Two reasons. First, there would have been hundreds of officers looking you within minutes if you had escaped. You were a politician’s wife and your case was high profile. I couldn’t risk a manhunt finding any of my safe houses and hurting those I promised to keep safe. It was an unbalanced chance considering the potential gain. Second, if I had broken you out right after your sentence started, you would have never considered staying or embracing what you are. You would still be hiding from your true self in a mansion on a hill.”

“It wasn’t such a horrible life,” I countered.

“It was a lie,” Magneto interjected. “Sooner or later, it would have ended. You can only hide what’s inside you for so long until it starts to fight back. Your mutation tried to protect you on the day we saw you. Did you feel it? Just before that guard took you out of the room, you made everyone in that room feel just as helpless as you did.”

“I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“I know you didn’t. That isn’t the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“That you can do it. You have that power inside of you and it isn’t going to go away, regardless of whether or not you stay here. All I’m to do is offer you the opportunity to learn to control it.”

“To help me learn to use it so I can use it to hurt people?”

“So that you can use it to help the right people, Elaina.” For the first time in several minutes, he lowered his tone and the words didn’t sound like a challenge. “You used it to try and help a human woman once, to give her peace during her last moments on earth and look what it cost you. No one I would ever ask you to help would ever want to hurt you or lock you up. You’d be recuing them from a worse fate than even you’ve suffered over the last eight years. You’d be their salvation.”

“Saving them from people like Trask?” I asked, my mouth doing little more than spitting the last word.

“Exactly.”

I nodded, at last releasing a little of the anger I had held in during the conversation. After picking up my abandoned knife and placing it on top of the two pieces of garlic I picked off of the larger clove, I let my palm collide diagonally with the blade which smashed the objects into small pieces. I took the peel off and reached over Magneto into one of the cabinets above us for kosher salt. The garlic needed to be practically a paste to suit me. Applying pressure to the knife, I smashed the salt and garlic together, chopping occasionally. After a short, silent pause while I did all this, I decided to change the subject of my interrogation to before talking about Trask made me angrier than I could contain.

“Horrorshow also said he knew my son was human, that he didn’t have any mutant gifts. How does he know that?”

“Because his father is human,” Magneto answered, also decided to return to his task of peeling and chopping. “There have been several mutant scientists who have studied it. They call what makes us mutant the ‘x’ gene. It’s a gene only men carry and pass on children. You’re ex-husband would have to be mutant or a carrier of the gene for your son to have a gift.”

“Oh,” I replied, soaking up the information. This was science, a field of study I was familiar with, but I knew next to nothing about the branch that had to do with the creation of my gift. “My father wasn’t a mutant.”

“Then he must have been a carrier for the gene, or it can skip a generation. No one knows why.”

“Were your parents mutants?” 

I had no idea what possessed me to ask him such a question. It was personal, but no more so than all of the little facts he undoubtedly knew about me. I knew it was likely a soft spot for the blue-eyed man before me, but so were the topics Daniel and Ephraim to me and he seemed to have no problem bringing them up. Although my pain didn’t compare to his, it was still there and I couldn’t help but think it was one of the reasons that he had chosen to save me out of all of the suffering members of out race out there in the world. I watched as Magneto momentarily closed his eyes as if to push something (probably a painful memory) back down below the surface before he answered.

“No,” he muttered.

“If you hate talking about yourself so much, then why did you show me your arm last night?”

“I hadn’t planned to show you, to be honest. Not many people here have seen it, they just speculate. I saw you last night and I started to think about why you were here and everything you’ve lost. You’re not the only person whose had a good life and had it taken it away because of what you are… I suppose I just wanted you to know that.”

I nodded and turned back to my work of converting the garlic into paste. Magneto continued his part and an increasingly awkward silence feel between us. Somewhere deep down I knew I had more questions, but my brain was too crowded with the new information that I couldn’t think of them at the moment. All I knew was that I had a lot of information I didn’t have before and a decision to make. Despite what I had thought hours ago, my options were not clear-cut. Nothing about the situation was black and white. Everything suddenly in my mind became shrouded in shades of grey. Each time I thought I had things back in order, the man standing beside me revealed something else and I was back at the beginning. How was I ever going t move on when every time I attempted to take another step forward, something else came to light that instantly forced me five steps back.

“I believe that should take care of it,” Magneto announced. I turned to the side and saw the pile of vegetables that had once filled the kitchen counter were now peeled, chopped, and deposited into the large pot I had taken out to cook in.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he replied.

“Not just for this, but for everything: for looking after me while I was in jail, for saving my clothes, and for taking me in. So far, I haven’t been very grateful, but the truth is I would be on the street if you hadn’t-“

“You don’t have to thank me for any of that,” he interrupted. “It’s what I do. It’s what everyone here believes in. I only hope that, one day, you’ll be one of them.”

“Dinner will be ready in a few hours,” I said, looking away and changing the subject. I was in no position to make a decision… not yet. “It’s beef stew.it takes a while.”

“Fine. When you’ve finished, if you’d like, there’s some articles about mutation in the library.”

“I’d like to read them.”

“It’s on this side of the hall, three doors down. You’re welcome to anything in there you like.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said and he nodded in response. 

“I’ll leave you to cooking now.”

Just as suddenly as he appeared, with those words spoke spoken, Magneto turned and left the kitchen. I had survived my second conversation with him without getting impaled by any of the metal in the room. Whether or not the other people in the compound would have seen as an accomplishment, I certainly did. There was something disarming about the fact my host could both infuriate me and shut me down with truth all in less that two minutes. The more I thought about what had just happened, the more confused I was and the more convinced I was that the man who had just left was a walking contradiction. He wanted me to embrace who I was, so I could do the things he wanted me to do. He wanted me to know I wasn’t the only person in the world who had lost things, but was also adamant that my old life was based on lies. He wanted me to trust him, but he built a wall around his mind when anything personal pertaining to him came up in conversation.

I prepped the meat and herbs for the stew, all the while thinking about the enigma that called himself Magneto. Like our previous two conversations, my contemplation ended in impasse. As I added everything to the floured and seared cubes of meat and put the lid on the giant pot, I decided I needed to turn my attention to something else. Once dinner was in the final stage of needed to simmer for hours, I could do as I pleased until it was done. Not knowing what else to do, I made my way three doors down to the library. Reading had always provided a welcome escape for me, even as a child. With everything going on in my life, I could only hope it would provide the same vacation as it had before.

I opened the door to Magneto’s library and momentarily stood in awe of the room. It was filled with books from the floor to the celling and certainly put the dinky hole in the wall the prison called a library to shame. As I started walking and looking around, I noticed there was a little bit of everything, from the classics to an expensive-looking set of encyclopedias. It was a place I could already feel myself getting lost inside of. I browsed until I found my intended target: the articles on mutation Magneto had told me about. If I couldn’t figure him out, I could at least learn about what made us both different from humans, this so called ‘x gene.’ As tempting as I would have found the Bronte sisters on any other day, they would have to wait.

Among the thing in what I deemed the medical section, there was a thin, black book that seemed oddly familiar to me. Though I likely didn’t know the content, the academic presentation of the work was something I recognized from my past life: a thesis. I had always planned on completing work for a doctorate later in life, but the education I did have coupled with the memories of all-nighters cramming to receive my R.N. told me that this was the product of years of intense study, more in-depth than I had ever done. Someone had studied mutants and wrote about it, earing a degree in the process. Someone knew enough what I was to write about it. I could only hope the author had taken steps in the beginning to explain the basics in terms I could understand. Maybe it would give me enough information to comprehend the vast amount of material surround it.

I gently picked up the thesis and glanced at the cover ‘Oxford University Thesis: By: Charles Francis Xavier On Genetic Mutation. 1973.’ Almost immediately after reading the name of the school, I began to feel intimidated. Even though I had years of experience in the medical field, I was no Oxford alum and probably rusty in everything down to the terminology. In the back of my head, I silently wondered if I would a word that Charles Xavier wrote. After a brief pause, I flipped to the first page of the thesis itself and started reading before I could loose my nerve again. ‘To Homo Neanderthalensis, his mutant cousin: Homo Sapiens was an aberration. The arrival of the mutated species, Homo Sapiens, was followed by the immediate extinction of their less evolved kin.’

I couldn’t get passed the first two sentences and it wasn’t because I didn’t understand. It was because I had been hearing the same argument for the past twenty-four hours. Charles Xavier’s hook sounded a like something Magneto would say, only backed up by science. Aberration…extinction…less evolved… the words seemed to whirl around me. Was this the way I was supposed to see humans? Was this the way I was supposed to see myself? It all struck me as two Darwinian to be the doctrine of any modern person. Or, perhaps I was blinded by my own lingering sentiment to see the facts in front of me. I married a human man. I had a human son. Were they inferior to me because they couldn’t get inside people’s heads or control metal? I stood quietly in a corner of the library with Xavier’s work in my hands until the smell of beef stew drew me away and back into reality.


	5. Field Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horrorshow takes Elaina to a place from her past to fulfill the deal he made with her the day before. Everything does not go as she hoped.

Chapter 4: 

Field Trip

The darkness gave way to a blinding light. I blinked twice before my eyes adjusted enough to look around. Once I could see it clearly, the sight made my heart stop. The white walls… the wooden podium directly in front of me… people surrounding me on all sides. The location was too familiar. This was the place where my life ended. This was the courtroom that sent me to prison years ago. Everything was exactly the same, nothing out of place. My entire body started to shake. The almost uncontrollable urge to run took over every other thought in my mind, but I already knew there was nowhere else to go. I couldn’t be here again. I would not survive it a second time. This wall and large group of people were starting to close in on me.

That’s when it happened. For the second time in my life, I heard the words that would define the next seven years: guilty. The words echoed like they were spoken in a cave. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. The two syllables reverberated in my head until the bailiff was standing right in front of me, but all I could see was his hands. I was completely engrossed with the pair of handcuffs he was holding. I knew they were meant for me and, in a room full of people, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It was the most helpless I had ever felt in my entire life and the feeling was even worse than I had I had imagined it would be. All I could do was, once again, succumb to my fate. Daniel was right behind me. I knew he was although he didn’t say a word. I turned around and, while the bailiff clasp the tight metal around my wrists, I said the one thing that came to mind, the one thing that still managed to matter in the midst of the world ending: ‘take care of our son.’

I woke suddenly from the dream with a jolt. My body was shaking and the duvet was wet with my sweat. It was a nightmare, but made so much worse by the fact that it was real. Every so often at night, my mind decided to add to my pain by forcing me to relive the day my world had crashed down in front of me. Even without the bars and chains to remind me, the nightmare was still there. The only difference was, with no guards or cellmates around, I could recover in peace. After so long, I had it down to a science. A full two minutes of nothing but heavy breathing, in through my nose and out through my mouth. Then, I looked around the room for several minutes to remind myself where I was. No bars… no guards, just the bed, desk, and three doors that were exactly the same as the night before. This was not prison… this was just the room in Magneto’s compound.

As a final step to the ritual, I indulged to the urge to walk to the door that led out of the room and opened it, just to make sure it wasn’t locked. I let out one final deep breath when I saw it wasn’t before closing the door again. By then, by brain was beginning to form coherent thoughts. It was a new day, the day Horrorshow had promised to take me to see my son. I had wasted enough time on nightmares that weren’t reality anymore. Now, I had to get to ready and get upstairs before my tardiness made the hired gun change his mind. My bare feet rushed from the main door to the bathroom door. While I used the facilities and washed my hands and face, I looked in the mirror and it hit me how much older I looked. Than the last time I had a good vanity mirror seven years ago. I had no make up, nothing to hide the new signs of age or the dark circles under my eyes (Horrorshow hadn’t saved any of that.) It was vain to think about it in that moment, but perhaps it was for the best. The more different I looked, the less chance I stood of being spotted by Daniel or someone else I knew. 

The lack of make-up and long bath I took the night before made getting ready faster. After I’d washed in the sink, I braided my hair and left the bathroom. Then, I moved on to the closet to dress. I didn’t know where I was going, but knowing who I was seeing made the decision easy. In fact, I had chosen it the night before as I put all my close back in their place (partially because of the mess and partially to go through my packets.) I slid on my jeans and the mint green sweater with the tiny, almost invisible stain from Ephraim spitting up on it. Once I slid on my boots that made the jeans the perfect length, all there was left to do was gab my jacket and the money on  
the desk before quietly leaving the room and trying desperately not to wake any of the others on my way down the hall. When I opened the door to the stairs, I couldn’t help but think that the attempt had gone better than my sneaking out the day before. I found Horrorshow in the kitchen and the coffee smell radiated from the open space so much that I didn’t need to ask what he was doing. Suddenly, caffeine sounded like the best idea I’d had in a days.

“Morning,” he greeted me gruffly when he saw me.

“Good morning,” I replied.

“The ‘good’ of the morning remains to be seen. Do you have something for me?”

“I do,” I answered before walking a few more steps into the kitchen. When I was closer to him, I reached out into my jean pocket and pulled out the money. One… two… three hundred dollars, the man’s fee for whatever we were doing that day. I laid the money on the counter in front of his coffee mug. The rest of the money was safely tucked in the pocket of my jacket. I didn’t need the man in front of me to know how much I had so he could change his mind about the rate.

Horrorshow looked at the money and then back at me before speaking. “You’ve officially purchased my services for the next six hours. Now let’s get going.”

I only nodded in reply and resisted the urge to grab coffee, in part because my hired gun was already heading toward the door. He pocketed his fee and quickly started to move out of the kitchen and toward the door that led outside with me trailing close behind. We both walked out into the dark, cool morning and proceeded toward the right side of the compound. Though I couldn’t see it very clearly in the dark, I could make out a black car ahead of us. I got the feeling that I shouldn’t ask who the vehicle belonged to or how it had came to be here. It was far too early to worry about it and, as long as it was taking me to see my son, I would learn not to care.

I opened the car door and sat down in the passenger’s seat and Horrorshow started the engine. We left out of the gate, which opened automatically, and were suddenly on an asphalt road. Having been unconscious when I had been brought to the compound, I had no idea what the road was called or where it led. I could only hope it led to Ephraim and not to anything else. Inside of the vehicle, it was eerily quiet. There was no music playing and the driver was looking out the window toward the road ahead. After several minutes, I realized my brain was going to run wild if I didn’t have something else to focus on. Talking would be as good as anything to keep my mind from wondering.

“What’s Magneto’s real name?” I asked abruptly.

“You’re going to ask his name and not mine?” Horrorshow countered.

“I’m not currently considering joining your group of mutants.”

“No, just spending the better part of the day alone in the car with me, driving down roads with places along the way that make it incredibly easy to hide a body if I wanted.”

“Fine. What’s your real name?”

“Horrorshow. I’m not telling you if I have to ask you to ask me.”

“Okay, don’t tell me your name. Tell me Magneto’s.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Because he builds a ten-foot wall around his mind when you ask him anything personal.”

“He’ll be pissed if I tell you.”

“And you care?” I asked, my voice challenging.

“No, I don’t,” he answered. “But I’m still not going to tell you. Not that I give a shit about Magnus getting mad, but this is between you and him. I don’t do that physic-bullshit and get into other people’s business.”

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?” I decided to change the subject when I realized I likely had a better chance of climbing Magneto’s mental wall than getting the information out of Horrorshow. I would be out of money again before he offered me any answers.

“You already know,” he replied.

“How?”

“Think about it. What day of the week is it?”

“Friday?”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“The Sabbath?”

“And is there anything special you and Prince Charming used to do today?”

I mentally cursed. Horrorshow was right. Once he asked the last question, I knew exactly where we were heading. Every Friday before the Sabbath started at sundown with very few exceptions while we’d been married, Daniel and I had always had breakfast at a little café called Grace’s before going to Synagogue that night and observing Sabbath the next day. After seven years, he apparently hadn’t given up the tradition. Now, instead of going there with me, he was going there with his new wife. I was the only changing variable in his life and obviously a disposable one.

“He still goes there…” I muttered to myself.

“Yep,” Horrorshow answered, knowing I had figured it out. “I told you he was an asshole. You’d feel better if you said it.”

I scoffed and sat back in my seat as far as I could, deciding that perhaps alone time in my head was better than talking after all. It was easy for Horrorshow and Magneto to say things about my ex-husband. They didn’t know Daniel. Most days now, I was sure I never knew him as well as I had thought I did. What he had done was wrong and twisted, but that hadn’t been our entire marriage. There were good times too, ones that I buried deep down during my prison sentence but were starting to come back to me the closer we got to Grace’s. I wasn’t only going to see my son, but my ex-husband as well. Once the thought occurred to me, it consumed the dark far corners of my mind. Soon, I began to wonder if this trip was something I could handle. There was no turning back now. I had time only to contemplate what my reaction would be as the car continued to move foreword.

Horrorshow and I passed most of the rest of the journey in silence until he pulled in to the Café’s parking lot. I took a deep breath and looked around out the window. The place was almost exactly as I remembered it: nothing more than a hole in the wall café on the outside. On the inside, however, it was home to some of the best pancakes I had ever eaten (both the last thing I hate before Passover began every year and the first leavened thing I ate when it was over.) If the outside was any indication, the food would likely taste the same as well. I could practically taste them already until I noticed the man in the driver’s seat eyeing me as if he was about to speak. Cautiously, I looked away from the sight around me and made eye contact with him instead.

“Two thing before we go inside,” he began in an authoritative voice that I imagined was designed to get people’s attention. “First, you stick with me and sit in the back of the place. You may not be able to see, but you’ll be able to hear them where I’ll put us. Second, keep your ass calm no matter what you hear or see. The last thing I’m dealing with today is an entire restaurant full of people crying or starting a riot. If that does happen, you’re on your own so keep your emotions to yourself. You got that?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Good,” he retorted. “Now, let’s get inside before Prince-Charming-in-a-suit-and-company get here.”

I didn’t verbally reply to the man in the driver’s seat. Instead, I responded by following his lead and getting out of the car. Trailing only a couple of steps behind Horrorshow, I made my way across the parking lot and to Grace’s entrance. He held the door open for me and we walked inside together where a young, blonde waitress with green eyes greeted us. She looked at us both and smiled brightly.

“Table for two?” she asked knowingly.

“Please,” Horrorshow replied for the both of us. “In the back, if you have it.”

“Of course,” The waitress said eagerly. I watched as she looked at the man beside me and winked before turning to grab two menus from her supply at the podium near the entrance. For someone likely getting paid below minimum wage and most likely paying her way through college (she certainly appeared to be around that age) the young woman was certainly trying hard. My first thought was she needed a large tip to cover her start of term books, but when she turned toward Horrorshow and I, it hit me.

“Right this way,” she beckoned sweetly.

The young blonde had just seen a man and woman walk seemingly innocently into a café on the weekend and ask for a table in the back. Her mind did not likely gravitate to ‘those people are obviously on a covert mission to check up on the woman’s son.’  
Instead, judging by her tone and the wink, she thought she was leading a couple to a romantic breakfast. I had to hold back a laugh the entire way to the table as I imagined being on a date with the man I only knew as Horrorshow. The thought amused me right up until the waitress stopped at a table and placed the menus on it on opposite sides of the table from one another.

“Your server will be right with you. Enjoy.”

With those parting words, she took her leave of us and we both sat down. It must have been that moment that the man across the table noticed I was on the brink of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“That girl though we were together,” I answered.

“You thought that was funny? You really have been sheltered the past seven years, haven’t you?”

“That’s putting it lightly,” I muttered, my mood suddenly declined with his mention of my past.

“Well, what did you think she was going to assume when we walked in together?”

“I just thought the place would be full of Magneto’s spies,” I retorted.

“If that were true, you’d never know it,” Horrorshow said. “But you can relax, he doesn’t send spied out every time someone leaves.”

“No? Just an escort?”

“Hey, after what happened the last time you tried to sneak into a place, you would be the one who needed one.”

Before I could respond to Horrorshow’s taunt, I glanced back in the direction of the entrance and saw them. Daniel entered first. It had been years, but I knew it was him the second my eyes turned in his direction. My ex-husband had aged a bit more gracefully than I had, but he hadn’t spent years locked up and I had no concealer, so it wasn’t exactly a fair comparison. I continued to focus on him as he held the door open and more people filed in. After Daniel, a young, blonde woman who could have passed as our waitress’s slightly older sister with no difficultly walked in. My brain quickly deduced that this must have been his wife… the one that replaced me. Most men would think he had gotten quite an upgrade from her to me and the look on Daniel’s faced confirmed he obviously thought so. I was so engrossed in seeing my ex-husband’s young, beautiful wife that I almost missed the pink bundle of blankets safely tucked in her arms: a baby. The man I had once made vows to had a daughter and she wasn’t mine. As much as the new trophy wife hurt, seeing the new child felt like a ten-pound weight dropped directly on my chest.

The wife and baby daughter were followed by the last two member of Daniel’s family: a sandy haired boy that looked somewhere between a toddler and school age and there standing next to him, holding the younger child’s hand was Ephraim. My son… my little boy whom I hadn’t seen in seven years. Looking at him next to the rest of the people around him, I could tell he stuck out from the rest of them. Among the group of blonde hair and blue eyes, there was my dark hair and brown eyes. His noise and the shape of face may have been passed on to him from his father, but other features called out to me as smaller copies of my own. He hadn’t looked so much like me as a toddler and I couldn’t help but think it was cruel taunt for him to resemble me now that that I would have been nothing more than a stranger to him. Then again, I thought to myself, it was just as much Daniel’s punishment as it was mine. My ex-husband had abandoned me, but after that he was doomed to look into my eyes everyday when he saw our son. Perhaps, in different ways, we both deserved this punishment but Ephraim didn’t.

All of the years I spent away and the things I had missed hit me all at once. His first complete sentence… his first day of school… his first crush… his first little league game, countless opportunities for laughter and tears had all been lost. Time was one of the most precious of resources and it had been taken away from me seven years ago in a New York courtroom. My breath was heavy to hold back tears and the weight on my chest felt as thought it might cause it to cave in. My thoughts continued to spiral downward until the sound of a baby crying filled the air of the café.

“Calm your ass down,” Horrorshow snapped in a low voice and threatening tone.

I blinked, ignoring the moisture in my eyes and looked away from Daniel and his family, which were now being led to a table by the same waitress that had brought my companion and I to our secluded location. The crying stopped almost immediately after my gaze left them. I realized Horrorshow was right: I was causing the pink bundle in my ex-husband’s wife’s arms to cry. As emotional as I was, I didn’t wish my pain on anyone, least of all an innocent baby girl. I took deep breaths and doubled my efforts to calm myself down, all the while, the man on the other side of the table was sending me a warning look, as if to say, ‘I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d leave you here if you start a riot.’ The task became easier when a middle-aged man wearing an apron greeted us.

“Good morning,” he greeted us in a pleasant voice. I nodded as he turned our cups over and poured black coffee for the both of us. “What can I bring you?”

“Ladies first,” Horrorshow offered. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes and say, ‘bullshit’ before I finally spoke. If I was honest, I had almost forgotten we were meant to order food until that moment. Luckily, I always ordered the same thing.

“The pancake special, no bacon, scrambled eggs, and I’ll stick with coffee, please.” I said with little noticeable hesitation.

“Two eggs over easy, toast, and a double order of bacon. Actually, you can throw hers on there too if you want, I wont tell, and keep the coffee coming.”

“Okay, I’ll have that out for you soon,” the man smiled at us, finished scribbling down our order down on his notepad, and walked away.

Once he was gone, my first instinct was to start looking around again to find where Ephraim was sitting, but my second thought was that I needed to calm down before I had the entire establishment in tears. I reached to the far end of the table for cream and sugar and tried to keep breathing steadily. Once I had the coffee the way I liked it, I took several slow sips before I decided I was calm enough to resume looking through the growing number of occupies tables looking for my son. My eyes started to scan the room and found nothing. Then, suddenly, once I quieted my mind, I could hear Daniel’s voice in the midst of the crowed café noises.

“The pancake special, no bacon, two eggs sunny side up, and orange juice.”

The voice was coming from behind and I remembered Horrorshow’s comment about not being able to see them. There was no way I could look back at them without making it obvious I was staring and who my gaze was directed at. I couldn’t look back, but I could hear them. It wasn’t much but perhaps it would be enough to give me a clue that Ephraim was safe and happy. I settled back in my chair and focused all of my energy into ignoring everything else around me and listening to the exchange behind me. After everyone had finished ordering and the server left, I could only hope that they would continue talking.

“This is our last Grace’s breakfast before school starts next week,” Daniel mused. “Enjoy it, son.”

“Do I get go school with Ephraim?” A small voice asked, the blonde boy I presumed.

“No, not until next fall, sweetheart,” his mother answered.

“Lucky,” the low, two-syllable word was really a murmur was the first time in years I heard my son’s voice. The last time I had seen him, he had been transitioning from words like ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ to more complex words and combinations of them. Seeing how he favored me and hearing a lower, male version of my sarcastic mouth coming from Ephraim made me wonder about the past once again: had he asked for me when I was gone? How many times had he woken up in the middle of the night crying without me to comfort him? What lies had Daniel told him when he started asking questions? If I walked over to him at that very moment and told him I was his mother, would he be afraid of me?

“I thought you liked this school,” Daniel commented in his attempting-to-appease-tone.

“I did,” Ephraim replied. “When no one knew who I was, when I could just be normal, but now everyone knows who I’m the Governor’s son and they treat me different, like I’m a freak or something.”

“Oh, sweetie,” the woman cooed softly. I didn’t even know her name, but the thought that she was at an adjacent table comforting my son made me both overwhelmed with grief and furious at the same time. She was nothing to him and she had no right to do the things for him that I was meant to do.

“Watch. Your. Temper.” Horrorshow momentarily, quietly interrupted my listening. “You’re pissing me off and, believe me, that won’t end well for anyone within a ten mile radius of this place. Do you want to leave?”

“No,” I snapped.

“Then do what I tell you, or I’ll drag your ass out of here.”

I rolled my eyes at him before returning my focus to the conversation behind me.

“You can’t hide from what you are, son.” Daniel said. “The truth always comes out, one way or another and by lying, you only hurt the people close to you. Do you understand what I mean?”

‘Yes,’ I mentally answered. ‘Don’t be like your mother.’

“Yes, dad” Ephraim replied obediently. ”But I—“ 

“He’s right, sweetie,” the young blonde in my place interrupted. “And if they can’t like you for what you are… all of who you are, they weren’t your friends in the first place.”

“Okay, mom,”

My entire world stopped with that one, three-letter world: mom. My son… my little boy whom I had brought into this world and had loved for even longer called another woman his mother. It was bad enough that she sat in my place at the table, bad enough that Daniel had married her a year after divorcing me, and bad enough she had borne two more children for him. Now, she also had the one thing I still cared about from my previous life calling her mom. She had everything and I was perfectly willing to part with all of it… except Ephraim. How could I stay away so long that my own son didn’t know me sitting a few tables away? How could I sit quietly and hear someone else comfort him? How cold I sit and hear him call someone else ‘mom.’

The answer was I couldn’t. There was no way I could listen to another word of the conversation going on behind me. It was too late to block it out. As the sound of Daniel’s baby girl crying filled the room even louder than before, I knew that I had to go. The server hadn’t even brought our food yet, but I didn’t care. My son’s words had taken what appetite I had before. I stood up and looked at Horrorshow, who was still giving me a warning look and held out my hand.

“Give me the keys,” I ordered sternly.

“Excuse me?” he asked me in a low, growling voice.

“Let me have the car key please,” I amended in a lower tone. “I can’t stay in here. I don’t want to cause a riot. I have to go.”

He pulsed for a minute. I supposed he was contemplating whether or not it was a good idea to trust me with the keys to the car. He honestly had nothing to worry about; stealing a vehicle had not even crossed my mind until that moment. Those were charges I certainly did not need on my criminal record. All I wanted was to get out of sight and out of earshot. I couldn’t bare hearing Ephraim call another woman ‘mom’ again. 

“Here,” he finally gave in and reached into his pants pocket to grab the keys. He held them out to me, but once again he look me in the eye with one of the most serous gazes I had ever seen. “ You can go sit in the car. I’ll be out in a few, but if you try to leave without me… If I hear the engine start before I get there, I will hunt you down faster than you can make it out of town. Got it?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I just need to get out of here.”

I took the keys from Horrorshow before reaching into my own jacket pocket that held my money. Without even looking around or thinking about it, I left a fifty-dollar bill on the table and left Grace’s without saying another word. While I left, I could hear the sounds of the baby girl crying ceasing at last as I opened the door and walked out of it into the parking lot toward the car.


	6. Good Scotch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina deals with the aftermath of her trip to see her family, with some help from Magneto.

Chapter 5:

Good Scotch

I sat inside Horrorshow’s car for what was probably only around twenty minutes, but it felt more like an eternity. He walked out of the café only minutes after Daniel and his family left (presumably to go home and prepare to celebrate the Sabbath after the sun went down.) Later, they would go to synagogue as we had, likely even the same one Daniel and I were married in years ago. I surrendered the keys to my companion and he began driving us back to Magneto’s compound. The hours-long journey was made seemingly even longer by the fact that I didn’t say a word and the driver didn’t push me to do otherwise. The entire drive back from Upstate, I managed to remain quiet and not give in to my emotions or transfer them to anyone else. Holding in my grief so that the man beside me didn’t have to feel it as well was one of the hardest things I had ever done. The entire way, all I could think of was the sound of Ephraim’s voice and the words, ‘okay, mom.’

When Horrorshow parked the car again outside of the compound, I got out of the vehicle and walked away from him without so much as a, ‘thank you.’ He had three hundred and fifty dollars worth of my thanks already and that would have to suffice for the moment. I knew I couldn’t hold in my emotions any longer. The car door closed and I started to move faster than I had any time in recent memory. I practically ran into the building, down the first flight of stairs, and into the room Magneto assigned me. Once I was inside, I slammed the door behind me and collapsed on the rose-colored duvet on the bed. My breath came in short sobs and I finally let the tears I had been holding in fall down my cheek. I no longer cared who heard my crying or who else felt my pain inadvertently. If any of them had been through what I had they would not have held it in either. I buried my face in one of the plush pillows and screamed. It didn’t make me feel any better, but the fact that I could provided me with the smallest possible amount of comfort. I hadn’t allowed myself to cry in prison, not even on the first night I spent behind bars. I had seven years worth of tears and I could think of no better excuse to use them than Ephraim. 

“She isn’t your mother!” I screamed while I buried my face deeper into the pillow. The sound was kittle more than a muffled noise to anyone else, but to me it sounded like the last string holding my heart together snapping in two.

“I’m your mother!” Each time the memory of the words replayed in my head, I screamed my reply into the void of down covering my face. Over and over, I repeated the words that I would have given anything to have said in response to the words “okay, mom,” coming out of my son’s mouth. I said the three words until I could barely speak and then settled for sobbing and whispering them every time I took a gasping breath of air.

“I’m your mother! I’m your mother. I’m your mother… I’m-“

“Elaina?”

A familiar voice interrupted my sobs from just outside the door. I knew it was Magneto, thought I didn’t know why he was there. Perhaps it was to gloat or to say ‘I told you so. I told you your old life as a lie.’ Maybe everyone in the compound was in tears from my outburst. Either way, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I kept my face in the pillow and stayed quiet in hopes he would grow tired of waiting for a response and go away.

“Elaina?”

Of course, I wasn’t allowed any such luck. Magneto called out to me again, this time his voice was slightly louder than before and accompanied by three moderate knocks at the door. Yet again, I ignored him mentally willing him to give up and leave me alone to continue my downward spiral.

“I know you’re in there… and you’re causing quite a scene out here.

‘So what?’ I mentally retorted. He had been the one to bring me to this place. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have met Horrorshow, never would have paid him to take me upstate to see Ephraim, and would have never heard his ‘okay, mom’ that caused my current downward spiral. No, I would still be on the streets, an inch away from starving to death with nowhere to sleep at night. No. All of this was because I had some strange gene that allowed me to do things. How could I, even for a moment, have seen it as anything other than curse: a plague of misery on my life.

I heard a clicking sound followed by the door opening. Magneto turned the knob and entered the room when I hadn’t even acknowledged his existence. Of Couse, it was partially my fault for still not being able to be behind a locked door. When I raised my head up from the pillow, I could see him and a floating metal tray in front of him just like the one that had held my chicken parmesan the night I came into the room for the first time. I watched it find its way to the desk in the corner of the room. Then, I turned my gaze back to the intruder.

“I don’t usually enter a woman’s room without her permission,” he said in a soft voice as he re-closed the door and met my dissatisfied look. “But I only wanted to bring you some dinner. Horrorshow said you hadn’t eaten…”

“I’m not hungry.” I snapped, perhaps in a more angry tone than I had intended.

“I spent years of my life looking at starving people and I don’t fancy seeing another one, especially under my roof. You haven’t eaten all day and you’re thin enough as it is.”

“I don’t want food,” I reiterated. “You’re Holocaust survivor guilt won’t work on me. I’m Jewish too, you know.”

“Then how about a drink?”

It wasn’t until then that I noticed the reason why the food tray had floated into the room. It wasn’t entirely to show off as I had originally suspected but because his hands were full. He held a glass decanter of amber colored liquid in one hand and two square, clear glasses in the other. I had the distinct feeling it wasn’t iced tea. Daniel had kept a smaller, slightly cheaper one in our living room for when his friends that were also in politics came over. I had very seldom participated in the drinking (and even less so after Ephraim was born.) Unlike my ex-husband and his companions, I hadn’t been born into an elite family but somewhere in the middle class and had somehow, much to their dismay missed the genes that were for recognizing and enjoying good scotch. The few times I had been obliged to drink it in the past, I hadn’t cared for it.

Yet, before I could decline, Magneto sat the glasses down on the desk next to the tray of food. I watched as he poured what I was sure was more than a couple of shots in to both glasses. He then took them up again leaving the decanter on the desk, and took a few tentative steps in my direction and offered one of them to me with an outstretched hand. Every talk my parents had with me as a teenager about not taking drinks from strange boys suddenly re-entered my mind. I wondered if he planned on getting me drunk and to what end. My brain flashed back to the prison guards and what they had done at night to vulnerable women. My entire body began to shudder and I looked at the man in front of me, mentally signaling I had absolutely no intention of taking the drink from his hand.

“No? You don’t want food and you don’t want to drink. Is there anything you’d like?”

“Nothing in your power to give me,” I replied quietly.

“Ah. I see,” he said gently. “Then how about just talking? May I sit?”

“You own the place.”

“Fair point,” he retorted. 

Magneto then proceeded to put one of the glasses of scotch down, seemingly giving up on getting me to drink for the moment. He then raised his arm and moved the desk chair to a spot democratically between the chair and the bed. I sat up when I realized he was getting closer, but not uncomfortably so… not yet, anyway. The man took a long, slow sip from his glass and looked at me before deciding to speak again. I could only speculate that he was contemplating his next long, politician-like speech to convince me to stay.

“Why don’t you tell me how you feel,” he began softly. “I think we’d both prefer that to you showing me.”

“Nothing,” I answered shortly.

“You don’t feel anything? We both know that isn’t true, Elaina.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I amended. “I don’t mean I feel nothing, I mean I am nothing. Everything I was before… everything I’ve even been my entire life is all gone. I’m not a daughter, not a wife; I’m not even a mother anymore. Everything I’ve ever known has been taken away from me, my whole life is gone. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m—“ 

“I want you to listen to me very closely, Elaina,” Magneto interrupted me. His voice was suddenly even more serious than it had been before. I could also detect a hint of anger in his voice, like the edge of a storm heading toward me from off a distant shore. “I won’t have you talking about yourself that way. You are not nothing, you never have been and you never will be. You are exactly what you have always been: a strong, powerful woman and mutant. I could feel that the first time I saw you seven years ago and I can feel it now. Those other things, they’re just words and titles that you gave meaning to and now they don’t mean anything anymore. Who you are, all of the things that make you who you are, those are things that can’t be taken away as easily as words can. I’ve been in places where they try, where they put you on a slab and cut you open to see what you are on the inside… but needles and knives don’t go that deep and neither do bars or words. You still have everything inside you to be exactly what you need to be.”

“What if I’d rather be a mother than a mutant?” I asked. “What if I told you I’d cut myself open and take the gene out if I could have my son back?”

“That isn’t true,” Magneto argued.

“How do you presume to know that?”

“Because if it were, you wouldn’t be here,” he argued. “Something has kept you alive all of these years, even without your son or anyone else. If he was al you truly wanted, you wouldn’t have went back to the hospital after he was born, you would have had him at your trial regardless of how it would have looked, and you would have went to him today in spite of the consequences. I’m not saying you don’t love him, I know you do and you always will. I also know you want more; you did even before all of this. Being a wife and a mother was never enough for you, Elaina. You could have easily stayed at home and never worked another day in your life, but you choose to walk into that hospital every day and help people. Am I wrong? Have I misjudged you all of this time?”

“No,” I muttered. The conversation was quickly becoming uncomfortable. Everything he said was true. In some dark, forbidden corner of my mind it was there. I could barely admit it to myself… in fact, some of it I hadn’t admitted so how did Magneto know? How could he take one look at me and know all of this? I wanted the truth, but it was starting to be too much. He was still looking at me with his blue eyes, waiting for something. I looked away from his expectant gaze, wondering what to do next. The untouched glass of scotch caught my eye when I began wondering around with my eyes. I didn’t really want it, but I didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t appear to be leaving anytime soon and was potentially full of more life-altering observation about me. I figured a drink would at least take the edge off. I walked quickly over to the desk, grabbed the glass, and sat back down on the bed slightly closer to Magneto. My lips were just colliding with the glass when he started speaking again.

“If I thought it was what you wanted, I’d give you some money and watch you walk out the door. You could buy you a little home; find a new job and a new husband. It would take some time, but you could regain the life you had before. But, there would always be something missing and the risk that something similar would happen again. Whether or not you like it, you can’t hide from being a mutant. You tried that once and it didn’t work out. I’m offering you the opportunity to build your new life based on the truth and with people who will accept you for who you truly are.”

“So I should just forget my life before, everything I was, and just be a mutant?”

“When did I say that?” Magneto quibbled. “No I don’t think you should just forget. I think you need to remember that time in your life as a warning against this happening again and to help you build yourself a better future.”

“How do you know the future will be any better?” I asked. “How do you know it won’t be more of the same?”

“I don’t,” he replied. “All I know is that the future is the one thing I’ve found that I believe is always worth fighting for. If you stay, I guarantee you’ll see it as well. All I’m asking, Elaina, is that you try this way of life before you go. Then, if you do have to move on, at least you’ll know what you don’t want.”

There it was again, the question that the vast majority of my conversations in the last forty-eight hours mounted to: Was I going to stay? Magneto had made the same point many times in many different ways. Now, it was my turn to talk. I had to make a decision. I couldn’t just go back and forth between choices as I had the past few days. The first night, I had stayed in the compound because I was starving and tired of sleeping in abandoned cars. Last night, I had stayed because Horrorshow promised to take me to see Ephraim. Why was I there now? Magneto was right… he was right about a lot of things. Something had kept me alive for more than seven years and it wasn’t the prospect of being a wife or a mother again. Earlier, I had Daniel and our son in my sights and walked out the door again. Both of them had replaced me. They didn’t need me. The other mutants out there, suffering at the hands of men like Bolliver Trask… did they need me? I realized that I did truly want to know and that there was only one way to find out.

“Okay,” I conceded after a long silence filled the room the room. “I’ll stay… for now.”

Magneto’s lips curved into a slight smile as if he had known this moment was coming all along and been only a matter of time. I quietly wondered after I said the words if hat was the case.

“Welcome, Elaina,” he said curtly.

“Conditionally,” I amended. “If you aren’t what you say you are, if you ever lie to me, don’t bother with the speeches again because I’ll leave. No questions asked. Your hired guns wouldn’t be enough to keep me here.”

“If I lie to you, I wouldn’t expect you to stay.”

Magneto raised his glass as if to make a toast as if to make a toast. ‘What the hell’ I thought to myself. I took a longer sip of the scotch than I had in my previous taste. As a longer amount of the amber liquid hit the back of my throat, it was all I could do not to gag. The burning sensation continued to spread as the alcohol descended to my empty stomach. Some people relished and enjoyed the feeling their intestines were smoldering, but I was not one of those people. I preferred to sip wine of have my hard liquor drowned out with soda or juice. The only reason I took another sip was because the burn was a distraction from the pain I still felt deep in my chest from the day’s events. It didn’t seem to faze the man in front of me at all, though he must have noticed a look on my face before he spoke again.

“I’ll remember to bring something not so strong next time you reduce half of my brotherhood to tears.”

I paused and thought about Magneto’s words. Somehow, I had already made an impression on the infamous ‘others’ and I hadn’t even met them yet. I had a feeling most of them hated me already. Living in large groups of people with my gift and erratic emotional state was an ideal situation. I would have to learn to control my mutation fast if I wanted to keep from angering the people around me. I quickly looked at Magneto. His eyes didn’t look puffy or red, though his pupils were slightly dilated from the scotch. 

“I’m not very good at being a mutant,” I mused. 

“You will be if you stay here,” Magneto assured me quickly. “Horrorshow will start training you in the morning. We’ll start with training your body, then we’ll work on your mind and soon you will be able to control it, I promise you.”

“Upstairs at 0600 sharp?” I guessed.

“I imagine so,” he replied. “Horrorshow prefers to train early and have evenings to himself. I should leave you to rest.”

I stopped him with my voice before he could even get out of his chair.

“May I ask you one more question?” I asked tentatively. 

“Alright.”

“What’s you real name?” I finally spoke after a brief moment to gather my courage.

“ ‘Magneto’ is as real and natural sounding to me as ‘Elaina’ is to you.”

“I understand,” I granted softly. “But it still feels strange not knowing what it says on your passport.”

I knew the last part of my statement would sound strange to him, but the fact was I had chosen it very carefully. Judging by our conversation in the kitchen the night the night before asking specifically about his past was off limits. The phrase ‘what did your mother call you’ would have been the way a normal person would have phrased it, but what little I did know about the man in front of me prevented me from wording my inquiry that way. I didn’t want to think about the mental wall mentioning his mother would have brought up… or what likely happened to her given the number on his arm. I could, however, deduce that he had obviously not lived in American his whole life. So, asking about something as trivial as a passport seemed to me at the time to be the most harmless way to ask his birth name.

“Erik Lehnsherr is the name on my passport,” he answered in said in a low voice.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I assured him. “It’s nice to meet you… Erik.”

Just as he had done to welcome me into his brotherhood, I raised my glass in an almost toast. I drained the last of the scotch out of my glass. When I finished, I looked up in time to see Erik get out of his seat. He had an unusual look in his eye as he returned the chair to its place at the desk without moving anything but his hand I quietly wondered as I watched him pick up the decanter and take my empty glass from me. When he got closer to me, our eyes met. Part of me wanted to try to read what he was feeling in that moment, but I eventually decided that I had likely pushed my luck enough for one night. He turned his strange blue-eyed gaze from me and started toward the door, not even bothering to turn or look at me when he spoke his parting words.

“Eat something and then get some rest, Elaina. You have a long day tomorrow.”

After those words, Erik swiftly exited the bedroom and left me alone with nothing but my thoughts. I was sure he walked out satisfied, knowing he had just added another mutant to his brotherhood. I, however, remained in place on the bed dumbstruck in the moments after his departure. Everything that transpired while he was in the room felt like a very strange dream I would wake up from in the morning. Surely I was not that crazy… or that desperate to have actually said the words I vaguely remembered saying: ‘okay, I’ll stay for now.’ The conditional statement following my agreement was of little comfort in the memory. The bedroom I was sitting in my bedroom. The compound was my home. I now officially lived in the place surrounding me. There was a strong possibility that it could be the only home I’d know for the rest of my life. No Daniel. No Ephraim. Only me, Erik/Magneto, Horrorshow, and the others I had yet to meet (but had succeeded in giving emotional breakdowns earlier in the evening.)

The final thought was too much. I knew I had spent enough time along in my head for the time being. I decided to follow Magneto’s orders in the absence of anything else to do. I walked over to the desk and sat where he had been sitting moments ago and took the metal top off of the metal tray. My stomach churned in approval. Tonight, there was a piece of roasted chicken with roasted potatoes, carrots, onions, and parsnips and, once again, a tall glass of white wine to drink. Like the first night’s meal, the food was soon gone and the glass empty. Though it didn’t take away the pain and confusion in my head, the rest of my body felt much better from the practically gluttonous action. I made a mental note to get back onto a suitable eating schedule as possible.

After I replaced the metal top over the now empty plate and wine, I decided that a good, warm bath in my large bathtub would make my body feel even better. After seven long years of group showers, I couldn’t deny that I shared Erik’s obvious bath preference. I relished being alone without other women looking at my naked body. I enjoyed watching the steam fill the whole bathroom as water filled the tub. And, I enjoyed at last submerging myself neck-deep in suds and warmth. For a while, I did nothing but allow the water to find and heat my body while taking slow, shallow breaths and somewhat wishing I had left the glass of wine for this. It was the only thing missing from my stolen moments of relaxation. As I leaned against the porcelain tiles that lined the tub, I could almost forget where I was and what I had recently agreed to but, like the warmth of the water that made up my bath, the moment could not last forever.

When the temperature of the water decreased to barely warm, I washed my body and undid my braided hair to wash it as well. By the time I dried off and put new, comfortable clothes on, the alcohol and crying had begun to take their toll. I had no idea what time it was, but I was exhausted. Erik had already informed me I had a long day ahead of me when I woke and, knowing Horrorshow, that was putting it lightly. Once my hair was dry and pulled out of my face, I turned the light off and laid under the duvet of the spacious bed… my bed. The thought process was going to take time to settle in to, time I did not have that night. In prison, I had often lied awake for hours after lights out. Fear poisoned my brain against sleep for those years of my life. Yet, on the night I officially joined Erik’s brotherhood of Mutants (even though I had also heard my son call another woman his mother, had an emotional breakdown, and drank scotch with the man known as Magneto all in the same day) I managed to put all of the confusing events of the day behind me and give in quickly to the aching fatigue slowing taking over my body.


	7. The Others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina endures her first day of physical training with Horrorshow and meets the rest of Magneto's Brotherhood.

Chapter 6: 

The Others

After a night of sleep that turned out to be not quite as fitful as I had anticipated, I rose out of bed: wide awake and fully remembering what was on my mental agenda for that day. This was my very first day of mutant training. I couldn’t decide whether to feel excited or terrified at the prospect of what was about to happen. The first night I spent in the compound, I told Erik that I could barely throw a punch and I hadn’t been exaggerating. For exercise, I preferred to go for a run or brisk jog in the mornings or in the cool evening air. In prison, I simply avoided people and situations that were likely to get me hurt. At no point in those seven years did I ever have a fight with another inmate. The gym and I had never been friends in either of my past lives. Remembering Erik say that they were going to start by working on my physical strength first had me concerned. As much as I would have like to skip all of that and move strait to leaning to control my mutation, deep down I knew I was out of shape and could benefit from the physical training as well.

I dressed quickly in what I usually wore to run: a well-worn tank top and yoga pants. After quickly braiding my hair out of my face, I knew it was time to face whatever was coming my way. I walked out of my bedroom and upstairs to the compound’s main floor, being careful not to wake anyone who might still be sleeping. Just as he had been the morning before, Horrowshow was in the kitchen accompanied by the smell of coffee. I could feel is eyes on me as I approached and got the distinct feeling that the man was judging me, sizing me up the way two people would before I fight. A chill came across my back. Did he expect me to fight him? When he finally decided to share his findings with me, it came in the form of his low, smoky sounding laugh. Unlike me, he didn’t seem at all concerned with the thought of waking anyone downstairs up.

“This is combat training, not a yoga class at some country club,” he remarked unimpressed.

“I’m sorry,” I retorted in my usual sarcastic tone. “It seems my husband decided to keep my battle armor when he threw out my things.”

I heard Horrorshow slam down his coffee mug in a way that made me wonder if it was still in one piece when it hit the table. Then, he approached me at the edge of the room and, again, fixed me with his blue eyes. This time, his gaze was one of the most serious I’d ever seen. It reminded me of the one prison guards got when transferring inmates… the one that seemed to wordlessly scream, ‘Don’t try any bullshit. I mean business.’

“You think this is a game?” He snapped. “It isn’t. This is your life now. What I’m about to teach you could save your life and other’s too. You get it right, you live and you live another day. If you fuck up, you or someone on your team dies. You can’t do this half-ass or go back and forth about it like you did about staying. This is serious and I don’t have time to trifle with you if you’re going run your smart mouth and quit tomorrow. You have to leave all that at the door and make a commitment, here and now, do you understand me?

“Yes,” I answered soberly.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he said sounding only half satisfied. “The let’s get to it.”

Once he secured my word to take everything we were about to do seriously, Horrorshow walked past me out of the kitchen. Without a word or a moments hesitation, I followed him. Both of us stopped at one of the doors almost directly across from what I knew was the library. Beyond the door, I assumed, was the room where everyone trained. It was fairly bare inside, like most of the rooms in the compound I’d seen. There were punching bags hanging from the celling in one corner, targets in another, a large mat that covered half of the room, and a case of weapons in the farthest part of the room. It was definitely large enough for groups of people to train or spar without without bumping into one another. The thought made me wonder if any of the others would join us but, given my trainer’s previous speech, I knew better than to ask.

“Take your shoes off and head to the mat,” he ordered gruffly.

Once again deciding to hold my tongue, I did as he ordered as quickly as I could without looking completely incompetent. My socks and shoes were off within minutes and I made my way to the mat. I moved to the middle where Horrorshow stood and planted my feet facing on the fairly soft surface. My eyes moved around the room and I quietly awaited instructions in the seconds before he spoke again. 

“We’re going to start with the basics,” he announced. “Today, I’m going to teach you how to throw a decent punch. You told Magnus you didn’t know how, so that’s where we’ll start.”

“Am I going to practice on the bags?” I inquired.

“Not yet,” Horrorshow replied. “The bags are tougher than human skin. You need to know what you’re doing before you go at one of those with your bare hands. If you break something, it’ll just slow us down. So, for now, just practice on me.”

“But—“ 

“Don’t worry about hurting me,” he interrupted my thought. “You’re nowhere near fast or strong enough to do any damage and, if you did, I deserve it for letting you. Make your dominant hand into a fist, go back with it, and aim strait ahead.”

Trying my best not to hesitate, I balled my right hand into a fist as he instructed. When I brought my arm back and forward again, my first punch was interrupted by Horrorshow’s disappointment.

“No, no, no,” he chide loudly. “Never tuck your thumb into your fist. You hit hard enough, you break the bone… you break a bone, you can’t train for six weeks and we have to start over, got it? I thought every kid on the playground knew that.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

I took a long, deep breath to calm down. Then, I took my thumb out of my still balled up fist as Horrorshow ordered. This time, after I pulled my arm back, he actually let me follow through with the punch. He caught my fist in mid-air seconds before it would have collided with his nose. The condescending look on his face did not diminish with my first attempt. Clearly, my punch did not approve much by correcting my mistake.

“Come on, don’t hold back. Just do it.”

He let go of my fist and I punched again. In my head, I thought I hit harder than the first time. Yet, my trainer’s face did not show any change as he caught my fist again. 

“Pathetic. Again.”

I tried to focus on speed the next time, to be faster than before. It did not good. My fist still collided with the man’s hand. In contrast to my uncoordinated, unsure movements, his seemed to be intuitive and seemingly effortless. 

“Put your weight into it. Don’t think. Again.”

The harder I tried to do as he said, the angrier he became. To him, I imagined my blows were little more than the buzzing of a slow, dying fly.

“Come on!” He yelled after my next attempt. “My grandma Horrorshow hits harder than you.”

My next two punches were more of the same: each time, Horrorshow would catch my fist and make a demining comment. His taunts ranged from ‘Is that all you got?’ to ‘Come on, just pretend I’m our ex-Prince Charming and let me have it.’

On and on, I punched until my knuckles were sore and countless times after that. My trainer kept commenting after every attempted blow, using a new tactic every time to try and get me to find it within myself to hit harder. Some of his words, even I expected to work. However, much to my dismay and his frustration, none of them were successful. As personal as taunts became, he never mentioned Ephraim. While Daniel, his new wife, and anything else he could come up with was fair game, my son was not. I supposed he knew as well as I did what would likely happen at the sound of his name. We did the same routine for what felt like hours and not even once did I come close to being fast enough or powerful enough to have an effect if I had. I was no soldier and, time and time again, I proved the words I had said to Erik to be true.

When he at last grew tired of my attempts to punch him, Horrowshow decided to try kicking. The exercise turned out to be more of the same: I would launch my leg at him and he would knock it back to the mat beneath us with his hand, offering yet another snide comment. I had never punch at anyone until that day and had certainly never kicked anyone either. But I did try. Whether or not the man blocking me knew it or not, I tried to get passed him. I channeled every angry, horrible thought I could ever remember having, brining them forth from even the dark recesses of my mind. Little by little, I pulled them all out and tried to make use of them. I didn’t know what else to do. To me, fighting was a way uncivilized people unleashed their anger. Normal, happy people did not go around throwing punches or kicking someone in the groin. I was learning to do these things because I was no longer normal nor happy.

“You get one more shot,” Horrorshow announced at last. “Give me one decent kick and I’ll let you out of your first day of training standing. Give me another weak excuse for a kick and I’ll show you what would happen in the real world if you tried it on someone who wanted to kill you.”

I took a deep breath and tried to summon all the strength I had bliss, they fatigue could sit in a long time ago. Even though he had expressed concern about me breaking bones, I didn't take yearly want to know what would happen to me in the "real world" trying to fight someone like Horrorshow. I lifted my leg off of the mat with purpose and Kate directly in front of me. For a moment, I thought I stick a chance of passing the test uninjured. My sense of security, however, was short-lived. When he grab my foot in his hands, I knew I was in for it. I had failed, though I had very little time to dwell on the thought. In one swift, quick motion, My trainer twisted my right foot to the left. It wasn't enough to break my leg or do more than feel uncomfortable, but what is enough to throw me off balance. I fell backwards and landed flat on my backside with one leg in the air. My trainer let go of the leg he had lifted and made his thumb and first finger on his right hand into a mock gun.

"And if I had a gun, "he elaborated gruffly. "I'd have a bullet between your eyes before you could even get your bearings."

I make my way back to my feet while Horrorshow watched me. Judging from my body's response, I was going to be sore later. But, somehow, that was the least of my worries. I was even more week and helpless that I had imagined. The past few hours has been nothing but me making a fool of myself. Embarrassment flew to my face and I couldn't stop it. The flush also did not stop the man in front of me from giving his unnecessary verbal evaluation.

"Well, you have about as much chance of surviving in combat as I do winning the Nobel Peace Prize."

"Thanks for the encouragement," I retorted.

"You don't need encouragement, you need to focus," he said. "How could you spend seven years in prison and be so weak?"

"I didn't fight," I answered."I got good at not getting noticed."

"Well, those days are over. Go grab a snack and do whatever for a while, but come back upstairs for dinner tonight. It's usually around 1900."

"Will everyone be there?" I ask in a dreading voice.

"Yep. You got it," Horrorshow confirmed my dread. "It's time to meet everyone else. They kind of met you last night."

"That's why don't think showing up tonight is a good idea," I muttered.

"No, that's why showing up is a good idea," he countered. "You need to show them that you're not a tool and you're not afraid of them. You're going to be fighting with them one day, so you might as well get used to having some of them around."

"As long as I get to leave in one piece," I said.

"Oh, you will… This time anyway. "

"That's comforting,"I muttered.

"It would be even more comforting if you knew you had to throw a decent punch," Horrorshow taunted. "See you tonight."

I left the training room without giving any more confirmation of whether or not I would be back upstairs for dinner. Though he didn't make it sound like I had much of a choice, I was apprehensive about meeting the other mutants that lived in the compound, especially after what I've done the night before. I had unintentionally shared my pain, but the fact remains I had. I couldn't deny that I had been curious about them ever since Erik mention their existence, I also had the feeling they were not going to be very pleased to meet the meeting that he given them a mental break down the night before. Perhaps they would be understanding. After all, they had been in my position at one point or another in their lives (granted, probably when they were younger.) Or, they could choose not to be and feel personally violated by someone who had the ability to control their emotions, but couldn't control their mutation. Horrorshow told me when I met him that my host to been looking for someone with a gift like mine for a long time, but did the rest of the brotherhood share his fascination?

Per Horrorshow's final order, I made my way to the kitchen for something to eat. Hours of physical training had left me starving. Very quietly, is if I might disturb someone, I toasted a bagel and smeared cream cheese on it. As hungry as I was, I decided not to eat in the kitchen and risk being seen by any of the others before I had time to mentally prepare. Instead, I grabbed an apple from the refrigerator as I replaced the cream cheese and poured myself a cup of now cold coffee my trainer had made earlier. With as much milk and sugar is I added, the initial temperature didn't bother me. When I was finished turning my cup of coffee from jet black to golden brown, I gathered my small meal and went downstairs to my room to savor the last bit of quiet I could. Meeting so many people at once with something I haven't done in a long time and just the thought of it made me anxious, though I hoped I didn't share it with those around me.

I spent the majority of my free time munching on my snack and finally reading more than the first two sentences of Charles Xavier's dissertation. Though my degree header card and knowledge of basic genetics, it was nothing compared to what this PhD student had done. I knew the elementary principal of genes. Through my high school biology and college classes, I knew half a child's DNA came for each parent. I knew that each physical characteristic was either dominant or recessive. This was why Ephraim had my brown eyes. The brown eyed gene was dominant over Daniels's recessive blue one. The only way for his color to be passed on by his and his new wife both possessing the recessive blue eyed Jean so their children. In high school, I vaguely recall to making a table for the genes of different plants and calculating the likelihood that the new plant will be tall, have red or yellow blooms, and on and on. In college, a professor had explained an extra set of chromosomes caused conditions like down syndrome and spoke of the ability of doctors to do genetic testing on features with the embryonic fluid. All of which was much more complicated than I ever care to get in to.

Charles Xavier's understanding of mutation was fascinating and, at the same time, enough to give me a headache. Apparently, the mutant gene, or the "X" gene was a mutation of the 23rd chromosome, which explained why so many of them manifested during puberty (and made a lot of things make more sense to me personally.) They could also be mental or physical mutations. So far, I had only seen mental mutations with myself, Magneto, and Horrorshow. I had never seen a physical mutation before: extra limbs… Different colored skin... Wings. The possibilities make me wonder what I would see it dinner later that night. In the back of my mind, I also wondered if they all had the same view of the gene superiority over Homo sapiens. If Xavier and Erik were right and mutants were the next stage in evolution, then one day the world would be field with the species who could all have unimaginable abilities. I wasn't quite sure how to feel about that vision of the distant future.

After losing myself in Charles Xavier's academic work for a while, I decided it was time to get ready for dinner. I took another bath to wash the perspiration of the day's training off of me and dressed in a V-neck, knee-length black dress. Although I didn't know what the majority of people I lived with wore, I knew Erik was definitely the kind of person that would dress for dinner. I styled my hair in front of the vanity mirror in the bathroom. It took me a couple of attempts but I managed to style my hair in a way that I deemed acceptable. After a long, deep breath, it was time to go back upstairs. This was it. I tried to swallow the anxiety gathering in my throat, but try as I might it would not go away. While I ascended the stairs that lead to the upper level of the compound, I continued to order myself to calm down. I certainly did not want a repeat of the night before, especially since they would they would be even closer to me in a matter of minutes. 

The smell of dinner bombarded my nose is soon as I opened the door. I knew I was right on time or extremely close to it. Very cautiously, I purchase the kitchen and couldn't resist having a peek inside. For a moment, I had expected to see an unfamiliar face, but as I focus I need the black clothed figure pulling something off the stove was Erik. Before I could walk away and leave him to himself, he turned around and saw me standing in the doorway.

"Hello Elaina," he greeted.

"Hello," I returned.

"I see you're joining us for dinner tonight."

"Well, I figured I'd save someone the trouble of bringing it to me." 

"That was considerate of you," Erik responded. "What you mind giving me a hand moving all of this into the dining room?"

"Not at all," I tried to sound is nonchalant as possible, but even I could tell there was still nervous edge to my voice. Before he could tell, I did cited to make my way into the kitchen and take whatever he wanted me to carry. It all looked very impressive to me when I got close enough to finally see the meal. There was some kind of fish, potato cakes, and white asparagus. If it all looked as good as it smelled, it was going to be delicious. I looked from the meal, all separated neatly in to presentation dishes, back to Eric and I couldn't stop my tongue.

"You lit a fire on the Sabbath," I have half-heartedly accused.

"If I were going to start living by Moses' law again, I think lighting a fire on the Sabbath would be the least of my sins," he countered darkly. "Come, take that plate and I'll show you to the room."

I am paid his request and picked up a plate of fish. That then, he was slowly making his way out of the kitchen and I turned and follow it. The dining room was across the hall from the library and I could hear voices even before we open the door to the room. As soon as Erik open the door, however, all the noise gave way to deafening silence. It did not seem to faze the man in front of me. He walked in seemingly without a pause or a second thought. I took a short moment to calm down and remembered Horrorshow's reason to do what I was doing: to show them I was not afraid. In many ways, it was a lie and I was sure no matter how hard I tried, that it would be written all over my face. Knowing that there was nothing else I could do, I swallowed hard and took my first couple of steps into the dining room full of fellow mutants.

As soon as I came into view, I could feel the eyes of everyone else in the area shift to me. It was a strange feeling to me, having spent the majority of the past seven years trying to be invisible. Yet, even in my occupied state of mind, I could still feel one strong, practically universal emotion being projected by the people inside the room: curiosity. It was nowhere near as guarded as Erik said had been when I had felt his the first time I saw him. The signature call him that he projected was also absent, though I didn't exactly since any hostility in its place. I was basically relieved by the conclusion that they weren't ready to kill me on site. My reprieve was short-lived and soon interrupted by Erik's voice feeling the room.

"Everyone, tonight we are joined by a new mutant," he announced as if he had repeated the same speech at least a hundred times. "This is Elaina."

"So… Last night, was that you?" A young looking boy asked. He appeared to be nothing more than a teenager. I didn't have to ask what he was sulking about and I could feel the mood in the room change instantly.  
"Yes," I answered after a brief pause. "I apologize for all of that."

"It won't happen again," Eric interjected. "Elaina began training with Horrorshow today and she's going to work very hard to ensure a mishap like last night does not happen again. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right," I agreed quietly.

The tone of Erik's interruption was one that seemed to say, 'The subject is closed because I say so," and no one seemed to be in the mood to argue with him. I followed his lead as you sit down the dishes of food in the center of the large table everyone was seated. Of course, the other said lift the seat at the head of the table for Erik, which he probably took. The other empty seat was to his immediate right with Horrorshow in the next one. I took the seat between the two mutants in the room that I actually knew. All the while, I opted to keep my mouth shut and watch what was going on around me. Just because their emotions were not hostile toward me in that moment did not mean that couldn't change. My goal as the meal began was to make it through the evening in one piece.

Those who are closest to the plate took them up, spend out of serving or more, and pass it to the right. Like Erik's speech introducing me, it seemed coordinated and routine to everyone except me. I couldn't help but feel like the piece of the puzzle that didn't quite fit. The feeling was absurd and I knew that. The man to my right would've likely told me I should've felt just the opposite. Although I had no most of the people at the table for only a few minutes, they already knew the one thing about me I had never even told Daniel: that I was a mutant. I was among a group of people like me for the first time in my life. Deep down, I should've felt relief at the thought of finally being able to be myself, but my anxiety took over the feeling before it surface. All of the anxiety stirred around inside of me as we pass around the plates of food and somehow I managed to keep it to myself. The final thing to be distributed was a bottle of white wine. When it came to me, I poured my glass almost full before surrendering it to Magneto. Once everyone had both food and wine, everyone started eating as if it were a cue that they had been waiting for. I went first for a sip of my wine before someone started to speak.

"So, Elaina, what's your other name?" The young man that had spoken before asked.

"She doesn't have a mutant name yet." Horrorshow replied in my place.

"Oh," he responded, quietly taking in the information. "Well, my name’s Flint, that's Ink, Angel, Azazel, Toad, and Sabertooth. I guess you already know Magnus and Horrorshow." 

"Yes," I acknowledged. "It's nice to meet all of you."

"Actually, Angel started out as my stage name, " The only other woman in the room interjected. "It just seemed to fit."

"In fact, most of the time, we find that those names suit us better than the ones we were born with." A man with red skin, Azazel, added. 

"So I hear," I said thoughtfully taking another sip from my wine glass. "I think I'd rather wait until I earn a new name instead of just taking one."

"When will that be?" Flint asked.

I didn't know how to respond to the young man's inquiry. In fact, I wasn't even sure why it said what I just did. I was still Elaina in my mind and couldn't imagine being anything else. Yet, the longer I stayed in the compound, the more I understood. Years ago, I would not have been able to imagine not being a wife and mother. At the moment I was neither of those things and, even more to my surprise, I was alive. Even more than simply surviving, I was slowly starting to build a new life. Perhaps a new name was not such an unimaginable step after all. Perhaps the day would come when 'Elaina' no longer seemed to fit who I was. Perhaps nothing was as unmovable is I had once thought it to be.

"When she punches me," Horrorshow at last filled the silence in the room.

"Okay," I replied. "Deal."

"It's settled then," Erik at last contributed in a soft, determinant voice. "Elaina will take a new name when her training with our show improves so much so that she's able to hit him."

Once again, the man at the head of the table spoke and the matter was closed. Although it was supposedly my power to control the emotions of everyone around me, Eric seem to do just that even without his mutation. His sense of calm radiated through the room for the rest of the evening. Occasionally, Flint would ask a question and someone, usually me, would answer. The rest of the people at the table remained silent and reserved to do just what the man at the head of the table told them. It was a level of trust that I could not imagine, at that moment, having with anyone... let alone, someone that blocked off so many parts of himself as Erik seemingly did from everyone around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: I originally placed this story in the time line with Ian McKellen Magneto. One of my favorite things about that was his dynamic with Pyro. Because it is too early for everyone's favorite fire teen, I created Flint to be his processor and a similar character, both in mutation (except Flint can make fire) and in terms of his relationship with Magneto (maybe even Pyro's relative?)


	8. Target Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina continues her training with Horrorshow... and gets some help from Erik.

Chapter 7: 

Target Practice

On the following Sabbath, I found myself stepping outside of the compound just as the sun was rising. Horrorshow had instructed me the day before as training ended to meet him outside the next day, rather than in the training room on the compound’s top floor. I had managed to hold my tongue and not ask why but now that the time came, my curiosity peaked. Each day for the past seven days we had done the same thing: stood facing one another on the large mat in the training room and in a mostly futile attempt to improve my kicks and punches. I had no idea why my trainer decided to change our routine that day. 'Maybe he finally decided I was a lost cause and he and Erik decided to kick me out of the place' I mentally speculated only half sure it would not turn out to be the truth.

Luckily for me and my hyperactive mind, I did not have to wait long for answers. When I walked out the main door of the compound, Horrorshow was already waiting, standing other the same tree we had smoked under the day we met. I quickly approached where he was standing. This time, there was no holding my curiosity back any longer.

"Morning, Horrorshow, "I greeted quietly.

"Morning, Elaina, "he returned.

"Why are we out here? "

"For a change of pace. When you're doing physical training, it's important to change it up and keep your body guessing."

"So I'm not going to be kicking and punching today?" I deduced.

"Nope. Today, you're going to give me ten laps around the building. Not jogging. Not sprinting. Running around this place. When you're out there in a real life flight, stamina is just as important as strength. Knocking one guy out but not the ten other guys in his unit isn't going to do anyone any good. So, you're going to keep up the pace through all ten laps. I'll be right here watching and if I see you stop or slow down, I'm going to start counting all over again. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Start whenever you're ready, stretch out first if you need to. When you're done with this, we're going to do something fun."

"Really? Like what?"

"Not telling. You'll find out after you finished running laps. When that is, well, that's up to you."

After that, I decided to stop asking questions and start doing as my trainer asked. In my head, I reasoned that Horrorshow had likely meant to give me an incentive when he mentioned 'fun.' The more I considered it, however, the more concerned I became. He didn't seem like the kind of person whose definition of fun agreed with mine. I tried to push the thoughts for my head and focused on the task I had to do before the so-called fun. In the grassy space alongside the tree I took a few moments to stretch. My muscles expanded and contracted as I moved and I could feel my body slowly start to wake up. After a few minutes of warming up and reminding myself that Horrorshow was watching me (and apparently, counting.) I stood up straight, took in a long breath, and started to run on my exhale.

The sun was well on its way into its noon day position in the sky by the time I was allowed to stop. Horrorshow forced me to start over twice. The first time was on my second lap (I wasn't going fast enough to suit my trainer.) The Second time was on what would've been my seventh lap. With only three to go, I was starting to get exhausted. I slowed down for a second on the other side of the compound to catch my breath. Of course, somehow, he could tell what I've done and started his counting all over again. Whether it was the change in my breathing or if one of his mutant gifts was having extra pairs of eyes everywhere, I found myself back at the beginning. Soon, my entire body was practically numb. My legs felt like I was walking on land for the first time after a month-long cruise. Breathing was harder with every step I took around the compound. The fact that I accomplished what he ordered at all was a surprise to me.

When I passed the trees for the tenth (but was actually the nineteenth time) I noticed Horrorshow had been doing more the stand under the shade of the tree and counting off my laps. There was a white plastic dummy hanging from one of the trees low-lying branches that said somewhere between mine and my trainers height (which was probably the average height of a man.) I also noticed there were five red "x"s hand-painted on the body. One was in the middle of the head slightly above the center. Two of them were slightly down from where the shoulders would've been on a real person. Finally, the last "x"s were directly in the middle of each of the legs. I looked from the dummy to Horrorshow, but I couldn't decipher anything from his face. It was time to put my inquisitive tongue to work.

"What's all this?" I asked.

"Target practice," he answered simply. I couldn't help but scoff.

"That's your idea of fun?"

"Well, I am more prone to violence than you," Horrorshow retorted in a sarcastic tone. "It's not a day of manicures and pedicures at the spa, but yeah, this is going to be fun. You'll need this."

It wasn't until then that I looked down at my trainer’s hand and saw what he was holding: a gun. I instantly froze. I never been so close to a gun outsider for prison, let alone held one. When Horrorshow had ordered me to hit him, I hesitated slightly but ultimately complied. Part of the reason I agreed to do it in the end was because I knew, even if on the off chance my hand did collide with someone's face, the worst I could do was a bloody nose. Using the weapon in the man's hand was something entirely different. This was more than the ability to hurt someone or self-defense. This was the ability to kill. Most days, I was convinced the only thing that allowed me to survive prison with the knowledge that I was innocent. Now, I had the distinct feeling I was going to be asked to do the crime I had been convicted of, but never committed. The thought sent a sick feeling into the pit of my stomach. 

"Come on, take the gun," Horrorshow said. "It's not loaded and the safety is on."

"I can't," I said sternly.

"You can't? That's bullshit. What's wrong with you? You've never held a gun before?"

"No," I answered. "I'm not a soldier. I was a nurse. I’ve seen what they can do and I could never do it. I'm not a killer."

"Everyone in this state already thinks you are."

"But I know I'm not!" I retorted loudly.

"You don't know what you are," Horrorshow shouted back. "You know how I know that? Because you've never had to. You've never had to be in a situation when it’s either you or the other guy and one of you ain't making it back home. You've never been the only thing standing between a bunch of civilians and the ones who want to blow them up. If you were in one of those situations, you might rethink not being a killer. Hell, I bet if I got too close to that boy of yours, you'd shoot me. It's all about what you do in the moment, but dangerous shit isn't going to wait around for you to be ready, which is why we have target practice."

"But-" 

"Look, I think we both know how this argument goes. You'll keep insisting that you're not a murderer and that you don't want to be what people think you are. I'll keep telling you no one is going to be responsible for the gun in your hand except you and the under the right circumstances, you’d kill here now. You have to decide what you can live with in the end, but you need to be prepared either way. So now you're going to take thirty seconds to chill the fuck out and realize that I'm right. Then, you're going to take the gun out of my hand so that I can show you how to use it and we could be done for the day while I still have the patience to do this. You got it?"

"Yes sir, " I sighed.

I quietly started to wonder when I had become so predictable but, as much as I did not want to admit it, he was right. The cycle he had described was exacty how every conversation with him or Erik ended. I didn't like already being labeled as one who would always cave in. Yet, I was also the one with only a little money to my name and not many useful skills to contribute to the brotherhood besides cooking decent meals. The uneven balance of power was palpable at times like these and it made me wonder if it would ever be even. The only way to know was to keep trying. The uneven balance of power was palpable at times like these and it made me wonder if it would ever be even. The only way to know was to keep trying and, for the moment, to do what I was told. I tried to tell myself that the target in front of me was just a dummy and, at the rate I was going with the rest of my training, it would be years before I actually came face-to-face with the situations my trainer described.

Just as Horrorshow predicted, I took the gun from his hands after my silent pause. The reality of what I was now holding took a moment to sink in. The small black piece of twisted metal was heavier than I had imagined. I supposed it was weighed down with being primarily an instrument of death and distraction. It also looked bigger in my hands then it had in Horrorshow's, but that was a matter of perspective rather than philosophy. Although he had told me it wasn't loaded, I still felt more and more uncomfortable the longer I held the gun. I did nothing but stare blankly at it until my trainer spoke again.

"I'll teach you how to load it in a second" Horrorshow announced gruffly. "But, for now, look at the dummy and pay attention. A gun only holds so many rounds at a time and pausing long enough to reload it in the middle of a fight is dangerous. You've got to make sure you've got another man covering you, which means he has to take his focus off of his own ass for about a minute. It's dangerous for that guy too. So it's important to make each shot count. Each X on the dummy represents the target you need to hit, depending on the situation. Once you can aim and shoot at the still targets, we’ll work on moving ones. The two on the shoulders are good for interrogation. Say Princess Leia won't tell you where the rebel base is. That’s when you shoot her there: it's far enough away that you don't hit organs so it shouldn’t be lethal, but bloody and close enough to the heart to show you mean business. It's a good move to get past the whole 'you won't shoot me' bullshit. Extra points if you hit the collarbone, that’s the clavicle to you medical assholes. It's a little bone, but a big pain in the ass to have broken. Next, the legs. In most facilities, the guards have trained one guy to be a runner, some guy whose job it is to either call for back up on comm or to take off running and come back with reinforcements. Our job is to make sure that doesn't happen. We need to bring the fight to them, not the other way around. So, if you see someone start to run or reach for their comm, you put a cap in their knee. Not many people can get up from that. You hit too high, you risk hitting an artery near the thigh you aim too low… Well, ask Achilles. So, accuracy is important especially when it comes to the leg."

"And the last one? "I asked. The sick feeling in my stomach was threatening to overwhelm me and I was sure I already knew what he was going to say.

"The one on the head? That's the good, old-fashioned kill shot," he said with none of the gravity that such a statement deserved in my opinion. "If someone comes at you… If someone comes at someone you care about, you shoot to kill. Don't mess around with the whole bullet in the chest thing. Your chances of hitting the heart are slim to none and most soldiers wear bulletproof vest anyway. Aim right between the eyes and it'll do the job every time."

"And they'll be dead," I mother quietly to myself.

"And you'll be alive," Horrorshow returned. "If you do everything I say. Now, this is a clip of ammo. It goes there in the handle, with the pointy in going the direction of the barrel. You can load it, but don't freak out yet. The safety is still on, so you can't shoot yet even if you wanted to."

I looked down and saw the Horrorshow also had a gun in his hand identical to mine. He held it in one hand and he pulled out what he called a clip. It looks like the handle of the gun, only one end if it was open to reveal six brass covered, pointed bullets. I watched closely as my trainer slid the ammunition quickly and swiftly into the handle of the weapon. His gun was loaded. Then, he took another clip from his pocket and held it out in my direction. 'It's just a dummy,' I told myself. 'I don't have to hurt anyone.' I tried to remind myself of these things is I took the object out of his hands and loaded my own gun. The instrument of death was now capable of killing and it was in my hands. I could feel even more anxiety enter my body and settle into my chest. As much as I tried to hide it, I knew it was likely written all over my face.

"The safety is this switch here, "Horrorshow said, indicating a knob looking piece just above the handgrip. "Pretty simple, up is on and down is off. Leave your safety on until I shoot, then it's your turn. For now, watch and learn."

My trainer raced his gun and, seconds later, fired it. When that sound filled the air, my entire body jolted. It was the first time I had ever been so close to a firing gun. It was one of the only things that I imagine could frighten me after everything I'd been through. When I finally recovered from the initial shock and looked at the dummy again, there was a bullet hole in the middle of the X on the objects head. He shot four more times and each time he fired a new hole would appear in the dummy directly on its target. Like watching Erik move metal, the feat fascinated and frightened me all at the same time. I couldn't help but wonder how many times he made the same shot, but not on a dummy… on a human being instead.

"Your turn," he said.

The moment I'd been dreading since I laid eyes on the gun had arrived. Horrorshow expected me to shoot. If I didn't, he would argue with me until I did. If I did without arguing… I wasn't sure. Would I be condoning something I didn't believe in? What I'd be doing something I would later regret? Or, like my trainer said, would I simply be prepared if anything tried to hurt me? It occurred to me that I could have you some self-defense classes before I went to prison. I couldn't help but remember how helpless I had felt all the time for so many years. If I had possessed the ability to kick, punch, or shoot back then, what would I have done? I decided that I didn't know the answer, but that I also wasn't willing to find out what would happen to me if I continued to be as helpless as I'd been before. I told myself this was the only reason I chose to do what Horrorshow ordered.

I took the safety office the gun as I had watched my trainer do before. Then, I raised the device and aimed for the X on the dummy's right shoulder. Once again, the loud crack of gunfire filled the air but this time because of me. I looked straight ahead and waited for a new hole to appear somewhere in the target, but it never did.

"Too far to the right," Horrorshow commented. "Try again. Use the site at the end of the barrel."

"Okay," I said. 

I raised the gun again and shot twice more. The first one hit somewhere in the chest (product of my over correcting from the first shots.) Then, something strange happened. If I hadn't known better, I would've thought the gun was moving by itself. I felt some strange, invisible force gently move the gun upward and slightly to the left. That time, when I fired, the bullet landed next to Horrorshow's in the middle of the dummy's head. I hadn't even been aiming for that target, but my aim was still unsteady from inexperience. When I looked at my trainer, he appeared just is in awe is I was until some realization I didn't share flashed across his face.

"You're not helping, Magnus," he shouted.

With his words, it all made sense. The small force I convinced myself I had imagined had all been Erik. I still wasn't used to being around other people with mutations in the situation at hand only proved that thought further. I looked around the grounds and slowly approaching the shady area Horrorshow and I occupied, there he was. In my head, I couldn't help but wonder how long he had been outside and whether or not he heard my trainer yelling at me. Or, to entertain an more horrifying thought, if he had witness the complete debacle that had been me running laps earlier. Was all just a coincidence or have you been watching me? Following my better judgment, I decided not to ask any questions even as he came to a stop next to us.

"I improved her aim," Erik said in response to his associate's previous comment.

"She isn't going to learn anything with you coddling her," Horrorshow counted.

“Who said I was?” My host hissed.

"Curving bullets doesn't count as aim, Magnus," Horrorshow growled.

"Just the same, I think I could contribute to this part of Elaina's training."

I blinked and looked back and forth between the two men. I hadn't seen them interact with one another much except exchanging pleasantries at dinner, but their current conversation made me feel uneasy. It was mostly because I couldn't tell whether or not the animosity I sensed between them was something I should be concerned about. It could just have been the product of putting two men with different views on virtually everything into close proximity for long periods of time, but I couldn't tell. Erik didn't strike me as the kind of man who tolerated being second guessed and Horrorshow was absolutely the kind of man who spoke his mind regardless of the potential consequences. I made a mental note to ask one of them how they met someday but, for the moment, I stayed silent and drink in the palpable tension growing around me.

"I will conclude Elaina's lesson for today, Horrorshow," Erik said fearlessly after a short pause. "You're free to go for the evening."

"Whatever you say, Magnus," my trainer returned. He then looked at me for a brief moment. "Same time tomorrow. Inside.

"Yes sir," I answered to his back. By the time I had a few seconds to react, he was already leaving the tree and heading back inside the compound.

Erik and I were both silent until the large metal door in front of the structure slammed shut. Horrorshow was no longer anywhere to be seen. Once again, my host and I were alone. I have barely spoken to him in the past few days and we hadn't been alone together since my mental breakdown the week before. Somehow, it was entirely different than being alone with my trainer. There were things about the man in front of me that still unnerved me. I thought about how one moment I could be angry. Then the next moment, he was telling me something about me or himself that changed everything. I hadn’t intentionally avoided him, we simply hadn't spoken. I have been so caught up in training and adjusting to my new daily routine, I hadn't thought about him until Horrorshow said his name.

"How are you, Elaina?" Erik asked cordially.

"I'm fine," I replied. "But Horrorshow says I have as much chance of surviving combat is he does of winning the Nobel Peace Prize."

"I have a feeling those two events will stay equally likely for very long," he scoffed. "Don't be discouraged. Everyone here started out a novice like you are, even me... and even Horrorshow."

"You two weren't this old when you started training," I muttered.

"Is that what you're worried about? "He asked after an indignant scoff. How old do you think Moses was when we parted the sea?" 

"Really? A whole world of women role models and you go to the Old Testament and Moses? That's quite possibly the most stereotypical religious example in history."

"Says the woman who chastised me last week for lighting a fire on the seventh?" Erik taunted. "I thought you would appreciate the reference, but my point is you're still a young, strong woman and you shouldn't think so badly of yourself. Anything worth doing takes time."

"You're right," I responded, more to his final statement then to the complements he had given me. I could only hope he understood.

"Why don't you fire your weapon once more without my interfering this time."

Without arguing this time, I obeyed his request. I didn't feel the strong, subtle pull of his mutation guiding me or my weapon this time. I was on my own and already partially sure I was going to make a fool of myself again. Nonetheless, I did my best to concentrate as if Horrorshow was still watching and would yell me if I did poorly. I took aim at the opposite shoulder I had been targeting before. The loud, firing noise filled the air once more and caused me to jolt suddenly. I was still not accustomed to it after my fourth shot. When I came back to my senses, I looked at the dummy for new bullet hole and found it on what would've been the upper left arm. It was below the target in nowhere near the clavicle, but it was on the dummy and what I considered an improvement. I could not help but feel the smallest sense of accomplishment (like a child learning to tie their shoe weeks after the rest of their classmates) as I turned around and looks at magneto, who was staring at me with an expressionless look on his face.

"You're very tense, Elaina," he commented and a voice not nearly as condescending as Horrorshow's.

"Shouldn't I be?" I countered. "I'm holding a gun."

"No," he answered shortly. "The person on the other end of your gun should be the one who's afraid."

I sighed in response. Once again, he had a point. I was about as intimidating as a teddy bear, even with a weapon in my hand. Frustration mounted in my body and I had no doubt it was strong enough to project on to the man beside me.

"Do you want me to tell you why you're not hitting the target?" Erik asked in the same tone as before.

"Because I'm not aiming correctly?" I replied.

"No, it has nothing to do with your aim or anything physical. It has to do with your state of mind."

"What state of mind should I be in exactly?"

"Years ago, when I was learning more control over my mutation, an old friend told me that the state of mind you need to be in to be at your most powerful live halfway between rage and serenity."

"Halfway between rage and serenity," I repeated aloud. "What does that mean?"

"I didn't understand either the first time I heard it, but I promise you it works," Erik explained. "You're angry right now and rightly so about a great many things. Horrorshow tries to bring it out in you when he trains, but it isn't enough. It's fleeting and you can't live off of it forever. Plenty of people, myself included, have tried. True power is about balance. You have to accept the emotions that come along with so much anger, ones that aren't as easy to give in to."

"You mean like last Sabbath when I emotionally disturbed everyone else in the compound?" I asked as a reminder of what happened when I gave in to my emotions.

"Not exactly like that," he said. "You'll know it when you feel it. I want you to close your eyes and think, really think about your past. Take as much time as you need to. We have all day. When you think you've got it, open your eyes and try again. You have two rounds left in your gun. If your mind is truly balanced, you'll see the results."

I close my eyes as Erik instructed and tried to think. It had been so long since I had allowed myself to think about my past. Going back farther than the past month felt foreign to me. Erik had said to balance rage and serenity. I took a deep breath and started to try. Like he said, rage was easy. I had plenty of memories that caused that emotion to bubble inside of me: being take away from my husband and son when I was innocent, sitting in a courtroom with my family and friends all looking at me as if they had already decided I was guilty, and my own husband sliding divorce papers through the hole in the glass that separated us when he came grudgingly to visit me in prison. Yes, rage was easy. Serenity was harder. I thought about my wedding day and how it felt to kiss Daniel for the first time as his wife, I thought about all of the charity dinners, Thanksgivings, and Hanukkah's I spent by his side. Finally, I thought about how blissfully happy I have been on the day Ephraim was born. To me, this was the very definition of serenity.

Yet, even my very good memories were now bittersweet because they were going and never returning. In part, all of the memories that caused me rage polluted my happier thoughts. The dark in the light mingled in my head until it was impossible to separate it. If I had never had my past life, I would not feel so much loss in that moment… but it would also mean giving up all of the good memories I was not prepared to part with. This realization must've been what Erik meant when he talked about a balance of emotions. I decided it was worth a try. Keeping my newfound epiphany in my head, I open my eyes, raised the gun, and fired my last two shots. I paused only the time it took to release the cartridges from the barrel. When I blink back at the dummy hanging from the tree, I was shocked. Both rounds were securely in the red X in the faux head right next to the ones Horrorshow had shot. When I glimpse at the man standing behind me, he had a strange almost grin on his face.

"Very good Elaina," he said quietly with his mouth next to my ear.


	9. Saving Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina proves her worth to Magneto and the brotherhood in an unexpected way.

Chapter 8:

Saving Grace

Another month passed by at the compound uneventfully. The days and week all began to all meld together until one day. It began like all of the others: training with Horrorshow. Thanks to Erik’s pep talk, my aim with a gun wasn’t half bad, but my kicks and punches had yet to show similar improvement. We had spent hours on the mat in the training room with next to nothing to show for it. That day, Horrorshow dismissed me for the evening like all of the others. As I walked out of the room, however, the man’s voice stopped me.

“No training tomorrow,” he announced. “Not with me anyway.”

“You giving up on me?” I asked, only half sure of the sarcasm in my tone.

“Not a chance,” he retorted. “We have a mission, so be on your own.”

“Everyone’s going?”

“Everyone except you. The place is pretty secure, so you’ll be safe. But that’s not any reason to slack off on your training. If you do, I’ll know. We shouldn’t be gone longer than twenty-four hours. It’s not a big deal, just getting some recon on the enemy. We head out tomorrow morning.”

I turned toward him, nodded, and then proceeded out of the room. Judging from his response, Horrorshow had misinterpreted my concern. Being alone wasn’t my concern. In fact, that was the one part of the situation I might have actually relished in. I had lived there over a month and no one had threatened us. It was the reason I was being left behind that knocked what little energy I had in my body out of me. After weeks of training, I was still virtually useless to the other mutants around me. Though I still wasn’t keen on the idea of using my newly developed artillery skills on anything with the exception of the training dummy or to go running into a combat situation, I had made the decision to stay in the compound in no small part because of Erik’s promise that I would be able to help people again. I had no illusions that it would happen over night, but I had to admit I was starting to get restless.

Yet, in that moment, there was little I could do except do what I was told and silently hope that the day would come when I could finally be of use. There was no one to argue with and no way I could convince them I was capable of doing more. When I woke up in my room the following morning, I knew I was alone. Erik, Horrorshow and the others were all gone. I had the entire compound to myself. It was the first time I had a place to myself since Ephraim was born. I had no plans to do anything drastic or destructive, but I certainly planned to revel in the solitude as much as I possibly could. That day, I was on no one's time but my own. I got dressed in my training close slow and headed up the stairs to the kitchen. I made coffee, deciding to see whether not having coffee before my training had any effect on my training. It was a four excuse for a science experiment, but I was determined to conduct it nonetheless.

When I had drank my fill of coffee and eating an apple, I started my training for the day. I had no doubt Horrorshow's threats about slacking off was not hot air. I had no desire to know how many laps he would make me run if he thought I had a sufficient amount of activity. First, I decided to run laps around the compound the way he made me before target practice: ten laps without stopping or slowing down. On my fourth lap, I started my account over because I could feel myself slowing down. In my head, I can hear my trainer's speech about the importance of stamina. All it took was taking my count down from 5 to 1 to motivate me to do the exercise correctly. Next, I went back outside and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator before entering the training room. Even though I had not yet been allowed to use the punching bag, I decided to do it anyway. I knew my kicks and punches were what really needed the work. Plus, I hadn't thought to ask anywhere where the guns and then we were before they left.

After a few mediocre punches, I realized Horrorshow had not been exaggerating when he talked about the punching bag. The force of it was harder than a raised, human hand stopping my forward motion. My knuckles were going to be sore for next several days, but I kept going. Like my legs after a long run, I told myself they would eventually go numb. I punched until I managed to knock the bag far enough back to turn around and almost hit me with the return force. It would not be enough to hit Horrorshow, but I judged it as a slight improvement for my previous attempts. By then, my knuckle was not only sore but swollen as well. I took all of the signs as an indication I could dismiss myself and spend the rest of the day as I pleased.

The combination of myself induced training session and the fact I was alone completely suppress the urge to cook. There was no way I was turning the oven on for just one person. Instead, I made myself a sandwich and took another apple from the refrigerator. I cut the fruit into small pieces and added peanut butter for the extra protein. Once I had plated my dinner and grabbed another bottle of water, I decided to go three doors down from library. It was, by far, my favorite part of the compound. The amount of time I spent there reflected it. At times, Erik or Azazel would come in while I read our browsed but they always seem to know what they were looking for and quickly left me alone. No one occupied the room as often as I did. In the past weeks, I'd read more books on genetic mutation using Charles Xavier's dissertation as a reference tool. What time I was not exercising my body, I decided to give my mind and equally strenuous workout. Although I had to admit my mind raised to the challenges somewhat better.

That day, however, I decided to take a break from science and medical books to indulge in some frivolous reading. I justified it in my head as a reward for putting myself through a work out as tough as harsh shows on my own. I took my time glancing around the shelves until I came across a well-worn copy of weathering Heights and stopped. Emily was by far my favorite of the Bronte sisters, not as idealistic because her sister but just as passionate. In her world, Jane Eyre might not end up with Mr. Rochester in the end, but their love would've been just as beautiful in those fleeting moments as a had at Thornfield. I quickly decided that it was my target. Very gently, I picked it up and sat down in the plush leather chair in the room. Soon, I was lost in the world of fiction.

Sometime later, I pulsed my reading long enough to make my way down to my room on the lower for the compound. While I was at a stopping point, I decided to take a bath and change into a nightgown. I figured the brotherhood (including Horrorshow) would be back in the morning and I would be in for another long day of training. In my head, I knew I likely should have gone to sleep when I crawled under the duvet, but I was enjoying being lost in the book I was reading. Once I started, I couldn't bring myself to stop again. Somewhere around the time Catherine Earnshaw became a Linton (much to Heathcliff's distress) I feel asleep with the book in my hand. There were no nightmares that night, no courtroom full of people shouting, "guilty" and no bailiff waiting with handcuffs, only occasional images of grassy plains and a stately Victorian manor house on top of a hill.

I slept soundly and peacefully until, sometime in the middle of the night, I was awoken by noises. My body jolted straight up in bed and I heard weathering Heights fall to the floor below. For one brief moment, I thought that might have been what woke me, but that theory was soon disproven by another noise. This time, I recognized it as footsteps… footsteps that were downstairs and close to my bedroom. The possible origin of the sound had my mind running wild. It could have just been Magneto and the others, but why would they be making so much noise? Someone could've been injured… or worse. Horrorshow had told me it was only recon. 'Then again,' the paranoid side of my brain took over, 'it could be someone else, someone who's broken in and wants to hurt you.' I quickly decided that was not going to happen. I wasn't alarmed, but I was a mutant. In that moment, I remembered the day of my trial and what happened as I was taken away. Erik told me my mutation had tried to fight back because I was in distress. I had made the whole compound feel my loss and sadness the day I heard my son call someone else ‘mom’ it is was an intruder, they were going to have a mental battle on their hands if they planned to hurt me.

My mutation was untrained and unreliable but that night I found myself having enough faith in it to not hide away in my bedroom and not wait for danger to find me. The door was unlocked as it always was and there was nowhere to hide even if I’d wanted to. I got out of bed ad walked to the door that led to the hallway. When I opened it enough to peek out, it was chaos. I breathed a momentary sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. My initial instinct that the noises were Magneto and the others was right, but I could sense something was very wrong. Even my underdeveloped gift could sense the urgency and panic surrounding everyone’s moments. Seconds later, I caught a glimpse if Erik dressed in a red outfit I could only describe as some kind of armor. In his arms, he was holding a bright blue body slightly smaller than mine with a black jacket draped around its middle that I immediately recognized as Azazel’s. Apparently, the mission Horrorshow described as recon had shifted into a rescue. I had never seen the blue-skinned figure before, but he or she was obviously a mutant... one that had possibly been tortured or experimented on by Trask or someone like him. It was all because of what we were. The thought made me irrationally angry for reasons I could not fully understand. All I knew was that a mutant was in pain and I wanted to help. When I agreed to stay in the compound, Erik had promised me I would be able to make a difference, that I would be able to help people like me. I wanted the wait to be over. At that moment, I didn't know what I could do, but I wanted to try. I was like an addict desperate for the high of saving a life after being denied too long for my liking.

"Come, Elaina," somewhere beyond my musing, I heard a call to me down the hall with the blue body still in his arms.

Erik was about to enter a door on the other side of the hallway, four doors over from mine. More importantly, he wanted me to follow him. Perhaps he to thought I could be of use. I wasted no time closing the door to my room and then closing the distance between us. Although it took me only seconds, the manhood already moved inside of the room. When I looked inside, I knew it was someone else's bedroom. On any other occasion, the fact would have given me pause, not then. I walked in as if it were my own and watched Erik gently lay the body in his arms down on the bed on the right side of the room. Without speaking or asking permission, I approach the blue form and began inspecting it. Erik slowly stepped aside, but remained close. Immediately, I could see a darker spots on Azazel's coat covering the figure's middle. I knew if I put my hand to it, the fabric would leak the crimson red of blood. Without seeing it, I could guess it was a sizable wound, not just made with a gunshot.

With one hand, very gently, I lifted up the right side of the jacket where the stain was. My suspicions were confirmed. There was a long gash up the side of the rib cage; so full of clotted blood I couldn't tell how deep it went. I also kept the garment up long enough to tell the body was definitely a she... a she that was virtually naked except for bright blue skin. After a few seconds, I replaced Azazel's coat around the still bleeding gash and held pressure to it with one hand while I looked over the rest of her. Her left leg looked swollen, a sure sign it was either sprained or broken. It would need attention as well. At the rate she seemed to be loosing blood, however, the leg wouldn't matter if her side wasn't stitched up first. 

At that exact moment, something inside me clicked. I knew why Eric had invited me into the room and why he backed off and left me examine the blue woman. She was going to die if she didn't get treatment and there was no way someone that looked like her to walk into an emergency room (not to mention there were probably police and probably government officials looking for all of us.) We would all be arrested and taken away on sight if we tried. It was up to me and what medical expertise I had to save her. I was going to have to call upon skills I hadn't used in years, but I had to be enough. If this blue woman died under my care, I truly was of no use to anyone. I had to do this and I couldn't do it alone. It was going to take all of us. 

"Azazel, I need all the clean towels you can find and bandages there might be lying around. Angel, go to your room and grab a needle and thread. I'll take anything you have, but if you have something that'll show up on her skin, it'll help. Toad, antiseptic to clean the gash. If we don't have it, grab the first bottle of hard liquor you can find. Horrorshow, Sabertooth don't go away. If her leg is broken, I'll need you to help me set it later. Ink, boil water and bring ice, lots of both..."

I took a deep breath in the midst of my barking and giving orders to realize what I was doing. More than half of the brotherhood had been given orders from me and, so far, no one had moved. There was a long moment of silence in which we all looked at each other and wondered where I had gotten the gall to tell other people what to do. They were all more powerful than me with their gifts under control. The answer, I told myself, was that I was the only one in the room with any prior medical experience. I wasn't going to back down, but I also couldn't get into a fight with all of them either. Not knowing what else to do, looked over at my side to Erik, the one person that I knew they would not question.

"Do exactly as Elaina says, all of you." he said in a low, dangerous voice in response to my look.

Just as I expected, as if someone had flipped a switch, everyone I had spoken to started to move when he said so. I gave him a grateful look before I put my head back into focusing on what I was doing.

"Horrorshow, Sabertooth, in the meantime, get on either side of her and keep her still. Magnus, help them if you have to... use the metal headboard if you have to. I can't stitch her up if she moves."

"What about me?" Flint asked, as if he were a child left out of a game.

"When Angel gets back with the needle, I need you to hold it on one hand and make your fire in the other. Then, hold the needle up over the fire, make sure it's hot, to sterilize it so she doesn't get an infection."

Flint gave me a determined nod, clearly happy to be of use, and I went to work. Azazel was the first to return given the advantage of his gift. Once more of the brotherhood started to return, I took the expensive bottle of vodka Toad brought me and the towels from Azazel and began to gently try and clean the gash as best I could. Flint needed no further instruction. He took the needle from Angel and started to sterilize it with a small fire he created in the palm of his hand. Once the clear alcohol hit the wound, I could hear my patient flinch and hiss in pain. Horrorshow and Sabertooth were quick to respond to the sound. Both of them grabbed her small blue body, but even their combined strength was no match for someone in so much agony. All the while, Erik stood above them next to the woman, gently running his fingers through her vibrant red hair and whispering to her softly something I couldn’t hear.

While I applied more vodka to the area and dabbed it dry with a clean, white towel Azazel put in my hand, I began to get a better look at the woman’s wound. With some of the clotted blood cleaned away, I could tell the cut was deep (likely done with a long knife) but it didn’t appear to have hit any vital organs. As close as it was to the ribcage and lung, she had gotten very lucky… either that or the one who had stabbed her hadn’t meant for her to die (like the three shots on the dummy Horrorshow taught me. One was for interrogation.) I cleaned the area as quickly and as thoroughly as I could. Then, I looked at Flint to give me the needle in his hand and then to Angle for the thread. I threaded the needle and took a long, deep breath, like the last drag of a cigarette and hoped I could remember how to sew stiches properly.

“Shouldn’t you give her something for the pain first?” Azazel asked as the needle made its approach to the blue skin. 

“I can’t,” I answered. “Giving her any painkiller we’d have here or some of the vodka would thin her blood and she’d bleed out faster. She’s lost so much already, I can’t risk it.”

“Then use your gift, Elaina,” Erik took a moment away from comforting the patient to fix me with his blue eyes. 

“I—“

“Even with all of us restraining her, she’s not going to still enough for to wave a needle in and out of her skin. You need to take her mind off of all this, make her rest peacefully while we help her. You’ve done it before and you can do it again.”

Although bringing up memories of my past was not the best idea give the circumstances, I couldn’t refute what he said. The situation suddenly became too similar to the last time I’d used my practice in medicine to help someone. Just the suggestion of it sent chills down my spine. I had given someone peace during their last moments on earth and it had cost me everything. Now, I was going to have to do it all over again to save my patient’s life. At that moment, I wasn’t sure if I could do it, even for so good a reason as the one in front of me.

“It’s alright, Elaina,” Erik said quietly, feeling my trepidation. I quietly wondered if the rest of the room could feel it too. “Remember how you shot the target the first time.”

“I’ll try,” I conceded. “What’s her name?”

“Raven,” Erik replied.  
“But she goes by Mystique,” Azazel added.

I nodded and silently wondered why Erik called her by a different name after insisting on being called ‘Magneto.’ However, I quickly forced the wondering from my mind and got back to the situation in front of me.

“Okay, Raven,” I said quietly, but so she could still hear me. “Try to stay calm. I’m going to try and help you.”

With that, I closed my eyes and thought about what Erik had told me before while I was training in the yard. ‘Rage and serenity, find the balance between your emotions to be at your most powerful.’ It was easier to find than it had been before and certainly a better idea than the state of mind I was in the last time I’d been in a similar situation. I went directly to thinking about Ephraim. Despite the pain it caused me, I thought it was the one think I had in my mind that applied best to what Erik told me: something that caused me pain to being into the world, but had been worth it… something that was taken away from me, but I wouldn’t trade for the world. No one in the room spoke or moved, but I didn’t need their confirmation this time to know it was working. When I was sure it was transferring to Raven, I slowly counted to ten to give her mind time to adjust to my influence, and began to stich the wound. This time, she barely made a sound when I touched her. Soon, the blue surrounding the wound was punctuated with silver stiches of thread re-closing the skin. It wasn’t a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but they would hold as long as she stayed relatively still for a few days. Finally, I covered the area with some of the bandages Azazel found and the most immediate of Raven’s wounds was subdued.

Then, I knew it was time to focus on my patient’s swollen leg. I made my way quickly down the bed to examine it. To my dismay, the appendage looked worse up close. It was swollen, but most of the distortion came from a dislocation of the tibia. The limb was in desperate need of an x-ray, but I settled for feeling it with my hands. I ran my hands over the blue skin and pressed my palm somewhat deeper into feeling the tissue and muscle around the bone. I could feel the break, but something wasn’t right. The gash I’d just cleaned had a few hours worth of dried blood in it I had cleaned out which I imagined happened not long before the brotherhood found her. The broken leg, however, felt as though it had happened days before if not longer than that. The bone felt to me as if it was already healing back at a strange angle. I would have no choice but to re-break it before I could set the wound and bandage it.

“Horrorshow, I take it you have the most experience breaking bones,” I said.

“I’ve never been asked to, but you’re not wrong,” he replied.

“Her leg is broken and it started to heal with no one to set it. It needs to be broken again so it can heal properly.”

“Show me where,” he instructed.

He approached me and the bed Raven was lying on. Then, I did as he asked and showed him the area I began to feel the break.

“Here,” I said. “Where the swelling starts.”

“Stand back. I got it.”

I took a step back and let the mutant do what he could. Although I had the most medical expertise, I didn’t have the strength (or the stomach) to break the woman’s leg. The task did not seem to faze Horrorshow. He took the afflicted appendage in his large hands and, within moments, I heard to all too familiar sound of cracking bone. Even with my lingering influence, it didn’t stop her from screaming a noise that sent new chills down my spine. I took a few steps close to them after that to show him how to gently put the bone back in place and more unpleasant noises followed. Once he thought he had the tibia in its proper place, I checked again by feeling the bone with my hands. I decided it was the best any of us could do without an x-ray to guide us. I braced the leg and wrapped it up as tight as possible considering the swelling.

“She’s going to need a few more pillows and more ice for the swelling.” I commanded in a slightly gentler tone than before. “Her leg needs constant elevation above her chest and the ice until the swelling goes down.”

“It will be done,” Erik said, his voice sounding more like a threat to the people surrounding us that assurance. “Is there anything else she needs?”

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” I reasoned aloud. “I’d recommend, since we can’t know how much for sure how much or give her a transfusion, that we get her vitamin B12 and iron supplements. She needs to take them with orange juice or any kind of vitamin C. It helps it absorb into the body better.”

“Angel, Azazel do as she says. I’ll watch over her tonight once I change. The rest of you: go and try to get some rest. We’ll start monitoring her in shifts tomorrow.”

Like a bunch of school children who had just been dismissed for the day, myself and the rest of the brotherhood filed out of the room. Everyone was eerily silent, but I could feel their eyes on me. Having just used my gift (something I was still not used to doing) I could feel their emotions as they all walked passed me in the narrow hallway. I half expected to feel disdain or even resentment coming from their minds, but there was none of that. In fact, it was practically the opposite. Some of them were a mixture of fatigue and relief, and a few of them (much to my surprise) felt what I could only describe as respect. I could barely remember the last time I’d felt someone think of me as anything but a common criminal who belonged in a cage until that moment. Unlike the last time I’d used my gift to help someone, the cops were not going to be knocking on my door in the days to come. This time, I had saved a member of my own race and I couldn’t help but feel the slightest sense of accomplishment.

“Elaina?” my mental musing was interrupted by the sound of Erik calling my name just before I reached the door to my bedroom.

“Yes?” I replied once I turned around to face him still in his red armor. The rest of the mutants in the hall simply walked passed us, seemingly uninterested by our exchange.

“That was extraordinary,” he began quietly. “What you did for Raven We all owe you our thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that. It’s what I do… or, it used to be. Is she a part of your brotherhood.”

“Not exactly. She’s an old friend of mine. Her allegiance isn’t fully to anyone but our race. The important thing is: she’s alive right now because of you.”

“I’m sure you would have figured out what to do. It wasn’t a biopsy, fairly simple first aid.”

“Don’t trivialize yourself that way. You knew what to do. You were confident. You’re a natural leader.”

“No one moved a muscle until you yelled at them,” I scoffed. “I wasn’t a very effective leader.”

“I lead out of necessity,” he explained. “I organize a group of mutants with a common mindset toward a single view of the future. But you… you could bring people together to accomplish something they never imagined they could do apart. It’s a gift.”

“Yea, I’m a regular medical Moses.”

“You know what I mean,” he insisted. “When you lean to apply some of those skills to your mutation, you’re going to be quite a force to be reckoned with.”

“You honestly think so?”

“I do,”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome. Good night, Elaina.”

“Good night, Erik.”

There was a long moment of silence between us, which, to my annoyance, I couldn’t read. My short-term hyper-awareness of everyone’s emotions was short-lived and there was nothing but Erik’s mental wall left to in its wake. Though I got the distinct feeling something was being left unsaid, there was no way for me to discern what it was. I frequently wondered if he was hiding something from everyone or only me. I had no theory about what the secret might me, only the slight hint with my gift that t existed. Surely, surviving genocide was had to be the darkest secret a person could have. I had warned him about lying to be and, as Daniel told our son, the truth could not hid forever.

“Erik?” I said softly when I could stand the silence no longer.

“Yes?” he replied in a similar tone.

“Could you open my door for me please? My hands still have blood on them. I don’t want to track it everywhere.”

“Of course.”

He raised his hand and gently did as I asked. By the time I walked into the room and turned around to thank him, he was gone. Once again, he disappeared when I considered asking more questions.


	10. Night Terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elaina learns a new aspect of her mutant ability under unusual circumstances.

Chapter 9:

Night Terrors

For the next month, my daily routine modified itself to include regular check ups on Raven. I compulsively changed her bandages everyday after training with Horrorshow and did another evaluation in the evening as I brought her dinner. Throughout the entire ordeal, the wound on her side never became infected (which I considered a great triumph given the circumstances.) In turn, I learned even more about mutation from the practice than I had from the book I’d read. Apparently, as I observed, there was an aspect of the gene (at least in some mutants) that affected the speed of their healing. In a normal human, the injuries my patient had would have kept them bedridden for at least six weeks. With Raven, however, it lasted only half that. Her body healed and, once she could walk, she vanished as soon as she appeared. The entire time the blue-skinned woman was under my care, she spoke very little to me. Erik’s repeated thanks, however, repeated over and over, made up in some ways for her reclusiveness.

As my patient unexpectedly left the compound, fall was beginning to turn to winter. Before I knew it with the combination of physical and self-induced mental training, it was December. My first holiday as a free woman in years was approaching. In my old life, it was my favorite time of the year (and even more so after I became a mother.) It was a time filled with family visits, food, and happiness. In my new life, however, it seemed everyone around me was content to let the whole season pass by unnoticed. Not a single decoration adorned the rooms in the compound or the yard, not for any of the seasonal holidays. Deep down, I supposed that the lack of cheer should not have surprised me like I did. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel empty inside at the lack of festivities. Although it had been years I’d experienced it, I found that the longing for it had not gone away.

After two weeks of trying to suppress the urge as the days of Hanukkah drew near, I decided to take matters into my own hands. On a clear day, I took the car Horrorshow and I used to see Ephraim (which I had learned since was more of a communal vehicle than anyone’s specifically) and drove to a far away town. While I was there I stocked up on medical supplies, which was now my additional duty in the brotherhood since the incident with Raven. Then, I drove until I found a small shop at the edge of town that sold Hanukkah necessities. I bought everything I would need for a makeshift holiday from the shop before making the long drive back to the compound. Although there was no need to be secretive, I snuck the things into my bedroom before anyone could notice. I had no plans to stuff a Jewish holiday down anyone else’s throat anymore than I planned on letting them stop me from celebrating in my own way. Months ago, I imagined the thought of having a holiday on my own would have made me and everyone else around me crestfallen, but I slowly found myself being able to keep my emotions to myself more and more as time passed.

On the first night of Hanukkah, I skipped having dinner with the rest of the brotherhood as we did every night. I made myself a small batch of potato latkes (not skipping on the grease as I did the rest of the year) after my training with Horrorshow. Then, I retired to my bedroom to keep my people’s holiday in what small way I could alone. While most Christians read or saw A Christmas Carol during the season, I decided to content myself with reading Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice from an edition of his complete work I’d found in the library while I waited for the sun to go down. In ways, I hated the play. Yet, I read it to remind myself how some members of society viewed the one race I was born into. It also made me wonder how I’d managed to be a member of two races people viewed as different. 

My room was on the lower level of the compound, below the main level but above the dungeon, so there was no window to see the exact moment the sun started to set or to display the menorah so that it was visible from the streets, so I settled for the average time for the state for the time of year which was 4:32 P.M. I had a better sense of the time since I finally added a clock to my room weeks before. When the minute finally arrived, I put the menorah on my desk and pulled out a pack of matches from my dresser drawer. I turned off the light and there was only a small amount of color in the darkness coming from the crack at the bottom of the door. It was barely enough for me to make it back to the desk and kneel in from the menorah. Once everything was in place, I started quietly reciting the first blessing in Hebrew.

I hadn’t spoken the language of my people in many years, but older memories served as a reminder of exactly what to say. As a child, I had listened to my mother and father say the words every year with them helping me light the candles afterwards until I leaned them myself. Later in life as a married woman, Daniel and I had taken turns blessing and lighting the menorah. Sometimes it was just the two of us, other times one or both of our families joined us for the holiday. Everyone was always peaceful during those eight days and my ex-husband and I used to look forward to the year our son was old enough to join in the celebration properly. As I spoke the words, I couldn’t help but think of him and wonder if, at this exact moment, he was blessing the old, familiar menorah his father and I used every year. The idea saddened me, but not enough to send my emotions through the compound.

During my seven years in prison, I hadn’t celebrated Hanukkah at all. It was a time of year to acknowledge miracles and I certainly had not experienced any of them among loosing everything. I finished the final blessing and used the match to light the middle candle, the Shamash. Using the Shamash, I lit the farthest candle to the left going in the same direction as the Torah was read. All the while, I asked myself why I had suddenly felt the urge to ask myself why I had suddenly felt urge to acknowledge miracles again. Even though nothing on par with one days worth of lamp oil lasting for eight, the past year had been better than the previous seven in many ways: I was free and no longer in prison, I had a warm place to sleep with food, and I had actually saved someone from possible death and was on my way to learning a new way to help people. Nothing about my new life was normal or even made sense to me most of the time, but it was mine and better than many of the alternatives I could think of. Perhaps this was the reason why I was sitting in the dark at my desk with the only light in the room provided by two of the menorah’s candles… perhaps I did want to show gratitude for the small miracles that had ben afforded to me.

It was customary for the menorah to stay lit for least half an hour each night and for something communal or special to be done by its light. In my past life, catching up or playing with a dreidel would have been on the list of things to do to pass the time. I couldn’t do either of those things alone in the midst of my non-traditional Hanukkah. I ate some of the latkes I made and had some of the chocolate gelt coins I found in the same store I’d bought in the same store as the menorah for desert. The soft, flickering light was no good for reading, so I sat in silence and reflected upon the miracles I was thankful for. What I did in those moments could not exactly be called a prayer (I asked for nothing, in part because I expected no reply) but I suspected a Rabbi or someone equally determined to name it would have called it praise. Regardless, it was the most spiritual thing I had done in a long time.

Suddenly, my solitude was interrupted by a faint noise outside. Judging by the sound, it was right outside my door. Someone was out in the hallways stopped just on the other side of my door. Their feet cast a darker shadow over the room, blocking some of the light that inadvertently came from the outside. When the intrusion was not immediately accompanied by footsteps, I formed a fairly certain guess of who it was: Erik. It had not occurred to me until that moment that there was another Jewish person in the compound. The stir of curiosity peaked in my head as I wondered what his reaction would be if he knew what I was doing under his roof. Would he be offended? Would he be hurt? Did he care enough to feel anything about it after everything he’d been through? I realized there was only one way to find out the answers to my questions and, before I could think better of it, I spoke.

“Come in,” I called gently to the shadow outside.

My words were followed by the sound of the door opening. I turned around, still kneeling in front of my desk, and watch Erik take a couple of steps into the room. Our eyes met and I began to try to decipher his reaction to what was going on around him. Of course, he hid his emotions from me via his mental wall. In spite of his efforts, he could not hide everything. The look on his face said more than my gift could ever decode from his mind. He looked away from me and to the menorah beside me. His gaze toward the object seemed as though he was looking into a portal to the past. I could inly imagine the memories that the scene brought back to his memory, back to happier times that were now polluted by what happened to him and his family afterward. Despite my previous curiosity, I had no words. For a long, few moments, I could only watch him as he looked into the flickering candle light until, much to my surprise, he spoke first. 

“I heard you blessing the menorah from outside,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “I haven’t heard those words in a long time.”

“Neither had I until tonight,” I replied quietly. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Why?”

“Why not? It’s the first night of Hanukkah and I’m a Jew.”

“I know what day it is,” he retorted. “Why would you light candles and put faith in someone who allowed their own people--innocent people--to suffer as we had? I thought you were going to make decisions on actions now, not words.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing,” I answered. “I could still be in jail or out on the streets, but I’m not. You could have been killed or worse, but instead you’re alive and helping people.”

“You think I owe surviving to anyone but myself?” he practically growled.

“Isn’t it a little frightening to think you’re on your own?”

“Not to me. The thought of someone turning their back on innocent people in need as they cry out to them is a far more frightening thought to me.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I sighed and looked away from him and back to the menorah. “If that’s what you want to believe.”

“How do you do it?” Erik asked suddenly.

“Do what?”

“Still have faith in a force greater than yourself after everything you’ve seen?”

“I don’t know,” I mused. “I always have, since I was a child. I’m not going to say I haven’t been angry the past seven years, I have. It doesn’t change anything, it won’t bring back the time I lost. The only way I know to survive now is what I’m doing: try to move on and try to prevent the same thing from happening to another innocent person. That isn’t so different from what you’re doing with all of this, your brotherhood of mutants, is it?”

“No,” he conceded in a low voice. I felt something shift as the man looked away from candlelight and back at me. “I’ll leave you to your celebration, Elaina. Chang Urim Sameach.”

“Tov, toda,” I replied my thanks in Hebrew as he walked quietly out of my room without another word, the same way he’d done many times before.

“When the door closed behind him, I returned to my silent contemplation in front of the menorah. I wasn’t going to let his words stop me from what I sat out to do. Just because he wanted to be the Grinch that stole Hanukkah did not mean I had to give in. Instead of ruminating on his words, I continued to think about how completely y life had changed until an hour had passed and I blew out the candle and the Shamash. With the main light in the room back on, I went back to my usual nightly routine: I took my plate back up to the kitchen and washed it, then returned to my bedroom for a long bath and reading. Within a few hours, I was emotionally exhausted from celebrating a long forgotten holiday and then having to justify myself to Erik. It reminded me of the kind of physical exhaustion my training with Horrorshow brought me when my training first began. Apparently, my body was much faster and easier to evolve than my mind. I didn’t stop to look at the clock or try and fight it when fatigue sat in. I marked my page in the third act of Macbeth, places the book on my nightstand, and laid myself down underneath the duvet on my bed. It didn’t take long for both my body and my mind to both succumb to sleep.

 

I slept soundly and relatively nightmare-free until I was awoken sometime later by a loud crash. The sheer volume of the sound was enough to jolt the entire upper half of my body upright when I heard it. As my brain slowly started to process the new sensory information it was receiving I couldn’t help but recall the noise and how it sounded like metallic, like two metal objects hitting one another with force. With that in mind, it was fairly easy to deduce who was causing the disturbance. I silently wondered why. The new clock on my nightstand read 2:00 am. What was Erik doing up at this hour? Did it have something to do with me celebrating Hanukkah under his roof? He had sulked out of my bedroom hours ago and I hadn’t seen anyone since then. Had it taken him this long to decide how angry he was? I couldn’t be sure of the answers to any of my mental inquiries, but I had the distinct feeling the time of year and the loud, metallic noises were connected.

Since the likelihood was high that I had somehow unwillingly caused an upset in the compound yet again, I decided it was my responsibility to calm things down. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say and I certainly did not plan to apologize for celebrating my ancestor’s holiday, but I was going to get him to quiet down. Another noise, almost identical to the one that woke me reverberated through the compound and I took it as my cue. I got out of bed and walked to my bedroom door. As I opened it and looked outside into the hallway, I noticed everyone else’s door was closed and everything else (save whatever metal thing Erik was destroying) was quiet and in place. ‘Maybe no one else heard it,’ I though to myself but even as the thought entered my mind, I knew it was unlikely. ‘Perhaps they don’t care enough to investigate,’ this thought was more likely and more reason to stop whatever was happening myself.

I quietly waited for the noise to come again so I could decipher the direction it was coming from. Fortunately for me and everyone else in the compound, my wait was not a long one. After another loud boom, I determined the noise was coming from across the hall, two doors down from my bedroom. I hurried to the source of the sound and knocked at the entrance. There was no response or loud crash to announce I’d been heard. I knocked several more times, each time louder than before, and received the same response. Part of me couldn’t decide whether or not he was ignoring me or he couldn’t hear me through trying to decide what metal object of his to break next. I resolved to knock one more time, as loud as I could before resorting to calling outside the door until he answered me. When I touched the door for the final time, however, I heard a piece of metal fall to the floor on the other side of the door. Seconds later, the entrance peaked open slightly. I decided quickly that, in his fit of breaking things, Erik must have broken his doorknob off. It was likely not intentional and it was by no means an invitation, but I chose to act none the less.

Whatever reservation I had about entering his bedroom unannounced disappeared as soon as I reminded myself he had once done the same thing when my emotions were affecting the brotherhood. I opened the door ever so slightly and crept quietly inside. The room was completely dark and, to my surprise, nothing metal hit me. I fumbled around the door until I found the light switch, not daring to go deeper into the room yet. When I blinked and my eyes adjusted to the new light, what I found was not what I’d expected. I saw Erik, seemingly asleep under a black, satin-looking duvet. His eyes were closed, but I could see sweat beads on his brow and it looked as if his entire body was convulsing under the sheet that covered most of this body. Above him, there was an elaborately designed metal headboard that appeared to have several little pieces missing. This explained the noise and what was broken. All of the signs around me led me to only one conclusion: Erik was having a nightmare, one so horrific in his mind that it caused his mutation to fight against it even though it wasn’t real.

“Erik,” I started calling his name in hopes of waking him up before his mind could do anymore damage. “Erik, wake up.”

The only noticeable response I could decipher was a low, gluteal groan that I suspected had more to do with what his mind was showing him than me trying to wake him. If it was a night terror, as I suspected by the movement and noises he was making, I had read in a medical journal a long time again that rousing someone out of it quickly was dangerous (especially considering the possibility of being impaled by a piece of metal bed frame.) Calling out to him from the other side of the room would do no good and getting closer was not a risk I was prepared to take either. Then, as if the idea had been swimming around the surface of my mind all along, a new option hit me: I could do for him what I had done for Raven and the old woman at the hospital years ago. Going into his mind and influencing it without his consent seemed to break every moral and ethical code I could think of, but so did turning m back on someone so obviously in emotional pain. His entire body practically radiated with his suffering. I decided he could scold me or do as he saw fit after his mind stopped torturing him.

Almost on instinct this time, my mind began to supply peaceful thoughts. I let them overtake me as I tried to transfer some of them overtake me as I tried to transfer some of them to Erik in hopes of ending the horrors in his head. The results were not the same as I had experienced in my previous two attempts on other people. Instead of him feeling my emotions of peace, I could sense his emotions. There was anger, anguish, and something else so strong that fear wasn’t an adequate enough term to describe it. It was relentless and strong, even worse than my own nightmares about abandonment and prison. All the while, I could feel the sheer power of his emotions try to make me give in to my own pain, but I fought against it with every pleasant feeling in my memory… every good thing I’d ever done. The war between my mind and Erik’s nightmare fought until something strange happened. The fearful, hopeless feeling he projected took me over in spite of my efforts to push back against it.

Suddenly, I was on my knees with my body curled up as small as I could make it in the position I was in. A chill rushed through the air and when I blinked, I could no longer see the bedroom in front of me. What I saw was just as real to me as Erik’s bedroom had been seconds before. All around me, there were woods. It was dark and what little I could see was all tress and high grass and shrubs. Five bodies treaded steadily though the growth. There were two older looking men in front being led by a tall teenage boy… a boy with an all-too-familiar set of blue eyes. Erik. A woman with dark, curly hair followed the three men closely. She was holding the hand of a young girl with similar blue eyes, possibly a few years younger than the leading boy. In the moonlight, I could see the lights behind them. They hadn’t caught up to them yet, but a sick feeling told me the moment was coming. And when it did…

I wanted to close my eyes and not see what was coming, but I couldn’t despite my best efforts. The ones with lights came closer to Erik and the people following him. It wasn’t long before I could see swastikas on their arms and the rifles they carried. A small, scared family running through the woods from Nazi soldiers and I could hear the footsteps closing in on them. There was yelling (presumably in German) that I couldn’t understand. Then, each member of the little Jewish family turned around to face the hatred following them. From all of the five, slender scared bodies, there was no hatred or will to fight. From the Nazis, there was only a hateful stare, like a farmer to herd of cattle being sent off to slaughter for meat that could not die fast enough. I could feel its searing burn radiating from them as five rounds shot off from their rifles. Four of the bodies fell to the ground at strange angles, leaving only one blue-eyes boy in their way, spotted with his own family’s blood on his face. He faced tens of guns and swastikas from all sides with only the dead bodies at his feet. Nothing metal moved.

There was a moment of silence darkness as the scenery around me changed. This time, Erik was on a train. It was so crowded in the boxcar; all of the people inside could barely starch their legs. There was nothing but fear, sadness, and loss as far my eyes could see. It was so cold, even with all of the huddled bodies together. Cold air and flakes of white snow entered the boxcar from holes in it no one bother to repair and through the door that was cracked on both sides. Young Erik didn’t take his eyes off of one far corner in the cart, which had a row of dead bodies in it all lined up like logs. He knew they’d be thrown in the nearest gutter when the train stopped again. The bodies were all still fully clothed. All of the living people around them must have know their jackets would have kept them warmer, but no one in the boxcar had the heart to rob the dead. Everything was quiet, except one small, old woman slowly reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer in Hebrew over the dead bodies on the train. In time, others joined her. Erik never said a word. I could see days later in something like retrospect, he’d find that old woman’s naked body dead in one of the shower gas chamber at Auschwitz. He took a quick moment to close her dull, horrified eyes before he and another man carried her to the furnace.

Another flash and change of scenery. A brightly lit, metallic looking room, Erik was much older now than the boy I’d seen before. He was dressed in a tight, black and yellow jumpsuit, his frame still thin from his years in the death camp. On his head, there was a silver helmet that covered the back of his head and the majority of his face. In this place, I could feel nothing but rage. He stood over an older, dark haired man who stood eerily still. It was as if his target was paralyzed or in some kind of trance. Yet, he was looking strait at Erik, which was holding a single, silver coin engraved with a Nazi swastika in the palm of his hand. There was so much anger his blue eyes. Anger and anticipation had melted away years of loss and sadness and fear. He’d been waiting for this moment for years, but it felt more like a lifetime. The older man was at his mercy and Erik wasn’t going to let him go alive, but had every intention of savoring the moment.

“If you’re in there, I’d like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But unfortunately, you killed my mother. So, this is what we’re going to do: I’m going to count to three and I’m going to move the coin.”

True to his word, Erik in a slowly calculated voice counted to three and, when he did, the Nazi coin in his hand disappeared into the older man’s skull, right between his eyes. It was the kill shot from Horrorshow’s training.

And then, I was back on the floor of Erik’s bedroom in the present. I looked up and over to his bed and saw that he was now awake. His blue eyes bore into mine when they met. It didn’t take any words. He knew I’d somehow looked into his mind. Even though I had no idea how it happened, there was no other explanation for what I’d seen. My efforts to calm his nightmare somehow backfired and sucked me in. Somehow however, I got the feeling my somewhat honorable intentions meant very little to him. Erik was angry. I didn’t need the residual effects of my gift to tell me that. I had seen and felt things he’d probably never shared with another soul in his life. I had, against my own will, broken trust with him. I was probably the last person on the planet he would have ever willingly shared those memories with: some woman he barely knew and asked too many questions for her own good and yet, they were seared into my mind as they were in his.

“What have you done, Elaina?” his voice came out in an angry hiss I had never heard before.

“You were moving metal in your sleep. The sounds of it woke me,” I tried to remain calm. My words were small and calculated, like a person approaching a rabid dog. “I thought you were upset and throwing a fit about seeing me celebrate Hanukkah. I came to your door to tell you to knock it off. You broke off half your doorknob when I knocked, so I came in. I was going to be angry with you, but then I saw you were asleep. I tried to wake you up, I knocked on the door and called your name, but nothing worked. So, I tried to calm you down with my mutation… but something happened. I didn’t mean to it. It’s never happened like that before. I swear—“

“Get out,” he ordered in the same voice as before.

“Excuse me?” I retorted. “ You can’t honestly think I saw any of that on purpose. It’s my gift getting stronger. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why you wanted me to stay? This is on you just as much as me, Erik. You aren’t allowed to be angry about this just because it happened to manifest itself at a time that wasn’t convenient for you. I was perfectly happy to leave whatever’s in my head alone. You wanted to harness it. Now, we’re both going to have live with the consequences.”

“Elaina, please,” his voice was quieter, almost pleading in that moment.

“I’m going!” I snapped as I got to my feet and headed toward the door. I turned back to say my final words to his face. “Don’t blame me for something just as much your fault as it is mine.”

I didn’t even turn around to see his reaction. His anger had gotten me upset as well and I no longer cared what he was thinking. I slammed his door behind me and walked back to my own bedroom. Although he was no longer anywhere near me, I could still recall even small, finite details about the memories that made up his night terrors. The loud yelling in German against the quiet night sky, the five rounds going off at once in the direction of the Jewish family, and the old woman’s prayer over the dead bodies… the ones that never made it to the death camps. All of these sounds, however graphic, were nothing compared to the smells. I had never experienced it myself, but it was there in Erik’s memories just as strong as the other senses were and equally vivid. The mere memory of them made me physically sick and the realization that this had been years of people’s lives (for many people, the last years of their lives) made it even worse.

I went strait into my bathroom, even bothering to close the door behind me, and dry heaved I threw up everything in my stomach. It didn’t make me feel any better (in fact, it was just the opposite.) Even the far off memory of the old woman’s burning flesh and death… magnified at least a hundred times from what I’d smelled in a hospital was enough to make me sick. How had anyone survived years of the smell? I made it over to the edge of my bathtub (crawling every inch of the way) when I was sure there was nothing left in me to loose. My back was propped up against the white porcelain and I held my pounding head in my hands trying to think, attempting harder than I had in a long time to hold at least a coherent thought in my head. All I could manage were parts of Erik’s memories… flashes of gunshots, dead bodies, and a coin disappearing into a man’s head.

“Elaina?” a voice called from outside my bathroom door. Of course, when I looked up from my spot on the floor, there was Erik. I looked at him and let out an exasperated sigh. 

“I’m not in the mood to deal with you, Erik,” I called angrily. 

“Your door wasn’t locked,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“That’s because I’ve spent enough time behind locked doors to last a lifetime. It wasn’t an invitation.”

“All the same, I wanted to apologize for being cross with you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped.

“I understand that,” he granted in a smooth, calm voice, “You have every right to be angry with me, Elaina, for the way I reacted. I realize I owe you an explanation, if you’ll let me.”

“Will you go away if I let you talk?” I asked, still angry.

“When I’m done, I’ll leave. You have my word.”

“Then you have two minutes. It’s late and I feel sick already, so go.”

“The things you saw tonight, I’ve only shown them to one other person in my entire life and the situation was a bit like tonight. I’ve always seen those things, what I did and saw, as my burden. Those memories… those nightmares are things that shouldn’t be in anyone’s mind at all. You’re the last person I would ever want to pass that burden to, Elaina. I know you have enough horrors to keep you up at night. I don’t want you to feel that kind of pain. When I woke up and saw you in my room, I didn’t know how to react. In a lot of ways, I still don’t. If I’m honest, I don’t want it to colour your opinion of who I am now and all of this I’ve spent so long creating.”

“You’ve felt my pain too, Erik,” I responded, still with an edge in my voice. “Don’t you think that embarrassed me? Don’t you think it might still scare the hell out of me? My pain may not compare to the little boy in your nightmares, but it’s mine. It’s my burden, one that I’ve been forced to share with everyone here… strangers. Think about that next time before you yell at someone who was only trying to help you to get out.”

“I—“

“No,” I interrupted. “You’ve said your piece and you can go now. But, so you know, the two minutes weren’t for you. They were for that little boy you used to be, the one who watched his family die and then was forced on a train and watch more people waste away. So was the retort. Me kicking you out now, that’s for the man you are right now: someone who has a choice and chooses to push people away, even the ones he claims he wants to help… even after everything you’ve lost.”

Erik didn’t say another word in response to me. He obeyed what I asked and left my room. I continued to sit in place for a long while and try to collect my thoughts. As horrible as what he had been through was, it was no excuse to shut me out. Just when I thought I might be getting close to a break through (to ‘evolving’ as Erik and his brotherhood called it) something had to happen. Just when I discovered a new aspect of my mutation, he had to put his mental wall back up. Though I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t want to be coloured as weak in his eyes any more than he claimed to not want to be in mine. We were barely more than acquaintances. In the months I had been living under the same roof as Erik, the most important and personal things I knew about him I learned was on the night we met (part of his attempt to get me to stay) and earlier that night (unwillingly by somehow looking into his nightmare.) It had to stop. I had to decide if he didn’t care, neither did I. If the rest of my life in the compound was to consist of casual relationships and celebrating Hanukkah alone, then so be it. I would be strong. I would not be the one to go begging for something more. I would figure out what was going on in my head alone. This was why I had stayed at the compound, nothing more. Come hell or high water, I was going to evolve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on the Hebrew: What Erik says is simply "Happy festival of lights/Hanukkah." Elaina says "Thank you." If anything about this or Hanukkah is inaccurate, I apologize. I've made every effort to see to it's accuracy, but the internet is not always reliable. 
> 
> Notes on Erik's nightmares: The first vision is pulled from the Magneto Testament, a comic about Magneto's early life. The second is entirely of my own creating, going off what I know from history classes and reading Night. The last one is from X-Men: First Class.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left review and kudos so far. Keep 'em coming :)  
> `  
> -Shakespeare_Pen_Princesss


End file.
